How we homeschooled today #39

Bob Marley, Yellowstone, sneezing

My son has a horrible cold. Some of us are rather underslept and not feeling our best!

• Lots of quiet reading this morning, from a stash of Usborne Young Reading library books.

• Greeking Out, Ladybird Audio Adventures: Vikings (I love this series), and Yellowstone, a BBC documentary (we read the excellent Bringing Back the Wolves a few weeks ago). I’m enjoying how our Yellowstone learning is now unintentionally intersecting with our Wild West learning.

  

  Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring

• Mysteries in Time Wild West and Ancient Greece magazines, plus some pages from A Kid’s Life in Ancient Greece.

• Multiplication by Heart (only five cards today so not too taxing even for invalids)

• My son added a couple of pages to his History Folder. Explanation from HWHT#28:

  We stuck various new labels onto our timeline, largely connected to Dover Castle. The section from 1700 onwards is rather crowded, and the timeline starts at 1AD which frustrates the children when they want to add something earlier, and so we hit on the idea of each child having a ring binder folder that they can add whatever they want to.

• My daughter did a (very) little work in her Jolly Phonics writing book, and was in a very bad mood about it. Later she wrote the two ‘tricky’ words from that unit to show me that she knows how to spell them. I explained that learning to spell is non-negotiable and that if she won’t do it at home she’ll have to go to school. (This isn’t meant to be a threat, it’s really true. Nonetheless I really don’t like saying it.)

• At lunch we listened to some of the pieces we heard at yesterday’s clarinet concert, and then the music from Totoro (the children’s favourite movie) which had my daughter spellbound.

• After TV I remembered to instigate quiet time. Not for hours (yet), just for 20 minutes or so, but I’m really pleased to be building the habit.

  

• On the way home from Beavers/Tiger Cubs a car drove past playing very loud reggae, and my daughter… loved it. So at teatime we listened to some Bob Marley, ska, and other reggae, and found Jamaica on the world map.

• Bedtime reading: Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes, and an old Pokemon comic.

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