How we homeschooled this week
One week in one post. Are you ready?
I’m breaking the week down by subject for easy reference, but we don’t follow a timetable or do work according to subject, so this might give a slightly misleading impression.
Maths
Board games with two dice
Times tables quiz
Literature/History
Listened to Odysseus II by Tony Robinson and Richard Curtis
More episodes of Greeking Out from National Geographic Kids
We read several stories from the Lion First Bible [side note: we’re not a religious family, so we read the Bible in much the same way we read any book. I know many Christian homeschoolers incorporate daily Bible study into their lives and what we do is definitely not Bible study. But as a cornerstone of Western civilisation I think it’s a good thing to know about.]
Read about Viking myths and history and compared Viking and Greek origin myths.
Read more about WW2 in our Mysteries in Time magazine.
Constructed a marble run and talked about Roman aqueducts and how important (and difficult!) it would have been to get the angles right.
Translated more Ancient Greek words, focusing on some root words so we can start to spot and decode Greek words hiding inside English ones.
My son dipped into Who Was Harriet Tubman and Who Was Alexander the Great, and we talked about why Tubman didn’t have a birth certificate or even a known birthday.
English
My seven year old did some spelling work and a little handwriting practice.
My five year old did some writing about a Pokemon he made up, and made some encouraging improvement in his letter formation.
Science/Geography
After watching the Octonauts movie ‘Ring of Fire’ we watched several volcano videos on The Kids Should See This, and read about plate tectonics and rock formation in The Story of Science.
I printed off a map showing the Ring of Fire for the children to draw over themselves, and we compared it with our Europe-centric wall map, talking about why you would choose to put a certain area in the middle of the map. We also found Egypt which had come up in both Bible reading and reading about coral reefs, and I showed them the Suez Canal and the shorter route to/from the Mediterranean that it opened up, which we learnt about when visiting the Cutty Sark recently.
They also watched Ada Twist Scientist and the Octonauts and the Great Barrier Reef, which we followed up with some reef-related reading.
My husband told us about the draining of the Fens and we talked about habitat loss vs. agricultural development.
We played Guess My Animal which involved working out whether a creature is a mammal, amphibian and so on, and discussion of habitats and locations.
I showed them bits of the latest National Geographic including elephants and echidnas (a mammal that lays eggs! Can you name the only other mammal to do that?)
We learnt about plaque and had fun using disclosing tablets to see which bits we miss when we brush our teeth.
It doesn’t look like it should lay eggs, does it?
Nature Study
We observed and identified butterflies, birds, and wildflowers using a combination of books and apps, including walking along/in a river at a nearby park with some friends.
Philosophy
My husband (The Common Reader) has been reading about Derek Parfit so we had several discussions about thought experiments and the right thing to do in difficult situations.
The children also went to Squirrels/Beavers (Tiger Cubs), and Athletics Club. We listened to Bach (in the background, but my daughter especially enjoyed it). And my daughter is racing through Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series—any recommendations for what she should read next are most welcome!