Although there have been days that I wasn't sure we would. :)
I think last week the novelty of homeschool wore off for Roman, and he was no longer excited, or cooperative, with the whole process. He is already very distractable anyways, and loves to make noises and hit his pencil or tap his foot on things, which drives Bourbon nuts, but there were a couple of days that he did it just to annoy us I think. And he refused to answer anything, I would ask him something and he would just say "I don't know" and not even try, and then get so frustrated and upset when I pushed and prodded for an answer. There were 2 days of this; thursday & friday. I was so happy the weekend finally came. :)
But so far this week he has been fine, so maybe he just needed a break.
We are still trying to find what works best for us. I've tried strict scheduling, and lax scheduling, and really we have found that some days we need to stay on a strict schedule and some days we need a more lax environment.
I try to stop myself from pushing the "school" day mentality, the one as an educator I have been taught, the one my kids know from being in school, where we follow a strict schedule, and all subjects must be taught in a day, and we must have some sort of paper work to do. But it is an adjustment. There are some days I plan way too much for us the get done, and then there are days I find I haven't planned enough. But my whole point in homeschooling them is to get away from those ideas, so I am trying hard to break free of what "school" needs to be. I really do believe that kids learn by doing and by using their own natural curiosity and trying to find out answers on their own through investigating, and not through reading about something and then being told what the answers are. So I am trying to plan our lessons based on that, but that teacher in me has a hrd time getting away from "But we HAVE to have a math lesson today!" and "Well, they really need to reveiw these language arts skills by doing all of these workbook pages."
So we are learning, all of us. :) But it is fun and so far I love it and feel really blessed that we get to do it.
Right now we are deep into our bird unit, learning all we can about different birds. We are going to my parents house this weekend and my dad is going to help the boys build birdhouses, and we have different birdfeeders we are going to make, and a bird bath. We are going to set up a little bird haven on the side of our house right outside our window so we can watch them. We are going to take pictures of all the different birds that we can and look them up in our oklahoma birds field guide and learn what they are, and what birds like to eat what food.
And we are learning about the different types of rocks and minerals, and will be doing some fun hands on experiments this week with food to help the boys understand how the different types of rocks are formed.
I find that I seem to gravitate to science and social studies themes alot. :)
But they do the online math lesson each day through the Kahn Academy, so they are getting that.
And I make them read, and we do lots of writing and oral reading with our studies together. And then usually they will have a language arts review worksheet each day.
I have discovered that they both are missing major math skills that they should have already learned, which they say they do remember covering the topics, they just don't remember how to do the stuff, which means they didn't really learn it, which is one of my major complaints with schools and education anyways is that the way that they teach requires usually only memorization, which isn't actual learning, and then they forget it. So they are brushing up on last years math skills, but I think they will have plenty of time to catch up and build a better math foundation.
friday we went to Martin Nature Park to go see how many different kinds of birds we could observe and take pictures of to look up in our bird field guide.
We were sad to discover that theyr awesome bird watching area had been destroyed by a large falling tree in one of the recent storms, so there weren't any birds there. They are in the process of building a new bird area, but since they were working on it at the time we were there, there weren't any birds there either. Sigh
We did of course see the occasional bird flying here and there, but they wouldn't be near enough, or stay still enough, to get good observations or pictures of.
They have an awesome little education building though, and we learned lots of new things there.
Starla & Lightning helped make blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning.....
We had better luck with our bird search today at the park. We had the opportunity to observe lots of different birds, ducks and geese. Including this momma duck who had laid a nest outside of a tree!
I love love love the fact that we can go to the park and study birds and not just read about them in books.
Roman has been begging for weeks and weeks to have his own library card, and finally today he got one. He is super excited. :)
I love the library, I always check out way more books than I can possibly read, lol. Which is why I had bourbon get a card years ago, because the limit is 30 books, so with him having a card we could check out 60 books! Hee hee. And now Roman has a card and we can check out 90. Not that I think we ever will, but I do go over 30 at a time quite a bit, especially with homeschooling. We have books checked out on manners, character building, several on birds, several on rocks, etc. It adds up quick, but is a wonderful resource for our lessons!! Plus DVDs on everything as well!
Roman checked out magic books and how to play the fiddle books and DVD's today. :) Kids learn more by persuing their own interests, so I think thats awesome. And I try to give them time during the week, as school time, to learn about their own interests. I think that is important, and helps keep their love of learning, and natuarl curiosity alive. :)
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