As part of my purge from Facebook, here's our Homeschool/COVID Notes from 2020:
January 22: Not too many other parents can say that they just dropped off their kid for the first day of Magical Artifacts class, but that's our life. (Other classes today include Passport to Adventure, Math Olympics, Color Theory, and Music and Movement.)
February 26: When we decided to start homeschooling, "global pandemic" wasn't on the list of reasons why we considered it.
Today, I'm off to do replenishment shopping for our "shelter in place" supplies. (Same sort of stuff for hurricane prep, but we're almost finished eating through last year's hurricane supplies.) Both my husband and I can work from home exclusively if we needed to, so thankfully we don't have to worry about that. We're not yet cancelling any upcoming vacations, but we do have travel insurance in place if we do need to cancel. What an interesting year it has turned out to be!
* Saxon Math, lessons 88 and 89 (Remainders in Stories about Equal Groups / Mixed Number and Improper Fractions)
* Biomes, chapters 11 and 12 with learning checks about the regions of the ocean
* A Kids' Guide to Money, chapter 3 (Ways to Save and Make Money)
* Spelling precheck
* Duolingo Spanish practice
* Journal Exercise for writing and typing practice
* A Smart Girl's Guide to the Digital World (Digital Drama and Taking on Trolls)
* Starting re-checks/assessment on grammar through Khan Academy
With the exception of teaching her the math lesson (which takes about 15 minutes tops to teach) and doing her spelling precheck with her (another 5 minutes), all of the rest of that is self-directed -- she does it 100% on her own, and just comes by if she runs into questions that she needs clarification on or if something doesn't make sense. So if you are nervous that there's no way you could teach your child at home because you can't have that kind of rapport with them, you can do it!
We've got one more order of food to be delivered (needed butter and was able to find ground chicken on Amazon Fresh), but we're well stocked for the next month. We still get boxes of fresh produce every other week from Misfits, and we can up that to weekly if needed. We ended up with two heads of cabbage last week, so last night was Chinese chicken salad on cabbage with sesame dressing. We have some pulled pork in the freezer, so that will go well with slaw tonight. The rest will be used in a stir fry with more chicken for tomorrow.
With the exception of me needing to drive to the vet clinic later this week to pick up syringes and insulin (which they can bring out to the car so we have no contact with people), nothing else planned for us as far as going out. Just life as usual here!
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March 17: After reading the Girl's Guide to the Digital World, kiddo had some concerns, especially about what would happen if she ran into content online that used bad words, and not sure how to identify bad words. So... we went to the expert in bad words to help explain it to her. Thank you George Carlin for giving the best and easiest lesson on bad language and why you don't have to be afraid of it, why some words are "bad" some of the time and others are "bad" all of the time, and what words shouldn't be used. She now feels confident that those words, while not appropriate to say, can't hurt her because they're just words. Naturally, the list has evolved over the years, but at least she now feels comfortable coming to us to discuss language she might hear in the real world to get an idea of appropriateness.
Unconventional parenting win?
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March 18: Today in homeschooling here --
* Saxon Math Lesson 90 (multiplying two two-digit numbers)
* * Saxon Test 17
Money Book Chapters 4-5 (this is the one we're using: https://www.amazon.com/Kids-Money-Book.../dp/1454919779)
* Video on Biomes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fb8143ndo8)
* Typing for Journal Exercise 28
* Reading Comprehension Lesson 25
* Catching on Khan Academy to fill in any missed grammar lessons (https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar)
* Writing spelling words 3x each
* Duolingo for Spanish practice
I picked up an extra small project for one of my primary clients, so I'll be putting in a few hours on that. Then I hope to get started on the 31 Days of Spring Cleaning exercises: https://www.stain-removal-101.com/spring-cleaning.html
And of course it's just a normal work day for Erwin.
Last night's dinner was pulled pork, Mac 'n' cheese and slaw. May have some of that for lunch today, too.
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March 19: Today in homeschooling, going to have to go back to my notes because Lily got up super early this morning and had cleared off half the items her whiteboard before I got moving. We're getting close to the end of the year, so she's wrapping up whole categories of work -- today was her last journal writing exercise.
She'll be finishing reading comprehension by the end of next week, along with grammar.
She finished up the unit on money and economics for social studies (and had already finished up Florida state history), and just has introduction to politics left.
She finished the unit on Biomes; earlier this year she had done a lot of her work in a book called Lonely Planet which is all about earth science and then did some space science books. Her final unit for the year is on weather, but we'll wait until next week or the week after to start that.
For reading, the books this year were The Wizard of Oz, No Talking, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The One and Only Ivan, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, along with reading science and social studies magazines. For the rest of the year, we're doing poetry with Shel Silverstein and Robert Louis Stevenson, a book called The Girl Who Drew Butterflies, and the young adult version of Hidden Figures.
For PE, in the fall we did swim lessons, and then we worked on bike riding, which she can now do!
So, mostly we're just down to math, with less than 30 lessons to go. I'm figuring she should be done with everything by mid-April, and then she'll start summer break.
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March 23: Just counted out what Lily has left for homeschool -- unless something changes, her summer break will start April 11.
Not counting what's on the board already for tomorrow, she's got:
Approx. 25 math lessons (and has been doing more than one/day)
5 Reading Comprehension sheets
3 Grammar level ups for Khan Academy
A book and worksheets on Weather
A book to read about hurricane hunters
A book to read about politics
Reading Hidden Figures
Reading The Girl Who Drew Butterflies
Reading and doing some fun exercises on poetry
That's it for 4th Grade!!
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January Shared with Your friNot too many other parents can say that they just dropped off their kid for the first day of Magical Artifacts class, but that’s our life. (Other classes today include Passport to Adventure, Math Olympics, Color Theory, and Music and Movement.)
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