How we homeschooled today #109

And an update on all those library books

If you’re new here, my daughter is 8 and my son is 6.

A very slow start. We didn’t sit down to work until 9.45.

• Yesterday we’d read about the Wright brothers, and last night I drew a diagram on the blackboard showing how an aeroplane balances thrust and lift against drag and weight. We’ve barely touched on forces yet, but it was a nice simple diagram and a good way to start thinking about them.

  

  From DK Inventors

• We’re revising some times tables using Multiplication by Heart from Math for Love. One of the cards today was a 9x card, and my daughter said that the nines pattern I’ve taught them wouldn’t hold true after 10 x 9. So we did an impromptu investigation into what happens after 10 x 9, and found some new patterns we hadn’t expected. This was also a good way to practise adding 9 by adding 10 and then subtracting 1. (The How We Homeschool discount on Math for Love products and curriculums lasts until 1st March. See this post for all the details. The curriculums are especially good value with the discounts and I am really enjoying the fraction curriculum I bought recently.)

• I wrote the spellings for the day on the board, and we talked about the patterns, rules, and unexpected bits. (Two spellings for my son and three for my daughter. Numbers vary according to the words—if there are a group that it makes sense to learn in one go, we’ll do them together, but if it’s difficult words with no connection then two new words is enough.)

• We had a quick chat revising nouns and adjectives.

• We transliterated three new Ancient Greek words (I’m introducing 2-4 new words a week, all nouns to keep it nice and concrete at the moment), I told the children what each means, and then we played the homemade matching pairs game to revise some of the other words we’ve learnt recently.

• That all took about 45 minutes, so then we took a good break while the children played and I did a bit of housework.

• At 11ish we piled onto the sofa and I read aloud for about another 45 minutes (which was probably slightly too long, as they’d rather lost focus by the time we got to the last book). We read:

  • Usborne Medieval World, about the feudal system and village life. (It turns out this book is just the medieval section of the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History.)

  • Journey to the Earth’s Core. This is another of the Usborne lift the flap books, and it’s a really good one. We’re only reading a page at a time because there’s lots of information to take in. We’ve covered the structure of the earth, tectonic plates, mining, caves, rock formation and fossils, and underground water so far.

  • DK Animal Atlas. I love this book. It’s broken down into 6 main sections: invertebrates, and the five groups of vertebrate animals. Each section begins with an overview of that group, which is great for reinforcing what exactly makes a bird a bird, or a fish a fish. And then there are pages focusing on particular animals, with lots of information that takes this beyond a book simply about animals, and into details of science and geography. I like all the maps, which are very useful for continent recognition (why is this proving so hard?!). There are lots of fascinating facts and opportunities to dive into questions raised by all the glorious detail.

    

  • DK Inventors. This is a good book, with a wide range of inventors each getting a nicely-illustrated double-page spread, giving an introduction to each person rather than a comprehensive study. I like that there are plenty of women and people from all around the world. Next time I’ll start with this instead of leaving it until last. It would make a nice morning time book, reading about one new inventor each day.

• [Aside: We did about 1.5 hours work this morning, the bulk of the day’s work. It made me think how silly it is that home educators in the UK are often asked to demonstrate how their children spend roughly the same hours as a school child does being educated. 1.5 hours of 1-to-1 time is totally different to 1.5 hours in a classroom!]

• After lunch we had some quiet time. I’ve been frustrated lately that the children are rereading all their old, easy books at bedtime instead of trying the new ones we borrowed from the library recently. It occurred to me that at bedtime they are probably tired and looking for ease and familiarity, so today I suggested spending ten minutes on a new book after lunch, with no obligation to keep going or ever pick it up again. My son is under the weather and just played with some toys, but my daughter read the first chapter of The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman, and I think was intrigued. Either way, I was pleased she gave it a try.

  

• Later in the afternoon they each wrote out their spellings, and chose a date from the morning’s history reading to add to their history folders, and after that they were free to play and read their new comics (which much to my delight involved some writing about ninjas). My daughter felt the urge to write to Lego. [Another aside: In recent months she’s written to two companies and one MP, and not one of them has replied to her, which is pretty dispiriting. In October I suggested she write to the King, seeing as her concern was an environmental one, and because I thought BP was more likely to reply. And lo and behold, they did! A couple of weeks ago she got a very smart envelope with a lovely, personal reply inside. So if your child is a keen letter-writer but never gets any replies, try Buckingham Palace.]

• Then out into the garden to play with a friend. They are currently all sitting outside in the freezing wind, pretending to be camping, and will no doubt continue until I bring them in for bedtime.

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