How we homeschooled today #33
Rain, reading, and a small rant
We woke to pouring rain, which was almost as exciting as waking up to snow because it’s been very warm and dry here for ages. My daughter went straight outside to work on her snail farm. I don’t think she’s quite realised that the snails don’t know they’re supposed to be captive.
Lots and lots of independent reading this morning. It’s like the children are making up for all the sunshine and fresh air they enjoyed yesterday. They have rediscovered their old favourites, the Biff, Chip and Kipper reading books, and seem to be going through them all. Also some Magic School Bus science books, Roman myths, the Aeneid (Penelope Lively’s In Search of a Homeland, try secondhand), and Small and Tall Tales of Extinct Animals, which I highly recommend.
My daughter and I looked at the rain map on the Met Office app. We found London on the map of the UK and worked out that the rain was moving north east. She asked why the rain was different colours so we talked about light/heavy rain and how it is measured in millimetres. I showed her mm on a ruler and we estimated how much rain had fallen into a container on the patio this morning.
We had a debate about astronomical and meteorological seasons, and whether one is ‘correct’. There’s a good (paywalled) National Geographic summary here.
I wrote three Ancient Greek words on the blackboard (helios, homos, phonos) which the children transliterated. I gave them some examples of homophones.
My son and I played with his WW2 cards, then we all played Bird Top Trumps (more talk about measurement with wingspans), and a jay very conveniently landed on our window feeder as we played so we observed him.
The children each worked through a maths mystery activity from twinkl. Small rant, feel free to skip: A friend kindly sent me some twinkl activities so I could see if we would benefit from a subscription. I don’t love twinkl—possibly because they are an education company which has deliberately mis-spelled their name and not capitalised it, which may be ridiculous of me but I just can’t help it. Their slogan is ‘time-saving teaching resources’, and I don’t think the main selling-point of teaching resources should be that they are time-saving. I find twinkl very worksheet-y and we don’t use worksheets very much. I feel that worksheets give you practice at getting good at worksheets, and not necessarily at the skills you are trying to develop. I also find the number of resources available completely overwhelming. Generally speaking, I’d rather have a much smaller number of resources that are higher quality than a million+ which, in my inexpert opinion, are not. (I’m not saying there’s no space for worksheets at all, just that we don’t use them very much in our own homeschooling. And I know that lots of homeschoolers do use twinkl and find it useful, so I’m in a distinct minority.) Rant over.
The children read their books all the way through lunch, and I put some music by Delius on. (Summer Night on the River, which seemed appropriate as we approach the longest summer night of them all.)
Then we spent what felt like decades in the local shopping centre while the children deliberated on how best to spend some money they have recently received from grandparents, and I tried to cling on to the last few shreds of my soul.
At teatime I read a little more from from the Usborne History of Roman Britain and we looked at a map of Roman roads across Europe, to get a sense of the journey from Rome to Britain.
I have been a little grumpy because the children haven’t done their Jolly Phonics writing workbooks today. They were busy with other things, I suggested Jolly Phonics and they weren’t keen, and I didn’t want to force it. I realise this is silly because they have done lots of other learning. My response was to eat too much cake, and when that failed, do some exercise. I am reminding myself that the point of a routine is not the routine itself, and that if they don’t do a particular workbook every single day for the next 12 years they will still end up literate and numerate.
Bedtime stories: An old Pokemon comic (ugh) and Koala Lou.
