How we homeschooled today #18
Sheep, Greek, and invisible ink
Straight after breakfast the children worked in their handwriting books (this and this), did some Multiplication by Heart, and worked in their Addition and Subtraction books. If you’re new here, I don’t want to be misleading; these workbooks have been neglected and unloved for months. We’ve done maths in lots of other ways (post here) and handwriting has been little bits of writing notes to friends, writing the beginnings of stories etc. They’re in a workbook phase just now, but this isn’t usually how our days start.
This morning we went to our local city farm and saw sheep being sheared. The farmer patiently answered all our questions. The children also got to feed some rare native breed sheep and goats, and saw lots of other animals. They liked hearing about how humans breed animals according to what characteristics they want to encourage/reduce, and how there are different types of pig just like there are different types of rose.
Sheep and skyscrapers Back at home this afternoon we played a homemade matching pairs game where you match the Ancient Greek work (written in the Greek alphabet) with the English translation. It was quite a low-key way of refreshing our memories of the things we’ve been slowly learning over the past few weeks/months.
They wrote messages in milk which we will warm up tomorrow to see the writing appear, just like they have read about in a book about spies.
I read aloud from Timelines of Everything, about Ancient Greece, natural disasters, and the golden age of pirates.
My daughter learnt how to spell her name using sign language, and I printed each child a sign language alphabet poster.
At tea time we watched a couple of videos about Helen Keller and the work of Helen Keller International. (And then about Harriet Tubman because it came next on YouTube.)
Bedtime stories: New Zealand and Who Was Ernest Shackleton?
Reading in bed: More Shackleton, and The Count of Monte Cristo (a children’s version).
Have a great weekend!
Over the winter my husband was reading the count of monte christo aloud at bedtime (at my recommendation). They got quite turned around in all the plots and were distracted by how much descriptive energy went into describing how wealthy he becomes...didn’t finish it and now we should probably get a children’s version just to tie up the loose ends!