How we homeschooled today #43

Food webs, beetles, and total silence (briefly)

Catherine Oliver

Jul 06, 2023

Last night at Beavers my daughter spelled ‘sink’ ‘singck’, which is not as crazy as it looks but does need some attention. So overnight I wrote various ‘-ink’ words on the blackboard and we looked at them over breakfast. This included adding the word ‘chink’ to their vocabulary, talking about a chink in armour as well as a chink that lets through light or a draught.
They asked me to reread them the National Geographic piece about education under the Taliban that we read yesterday.
Yesterday a kind neighbour gave them each an animal balloon—a fox and a hedgehog. They knew a fox was a mesopredator but weren’t sure about the proper term for a hedgehog, so asked me to teach them more about food webs. This connected to previous learning about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and beavers to the UK.
Last night when her brother was asleep, my daughter finished her Jolly Phonics workbook. We had discussed that when she finished I would give her a test (except I didn’t use that word, which may or may not be sensible) on all the words she had learnt to spell and then we would have a celebration. So she did her spelling test, and then I made Paddington Bear muffins at her request, and I made her a certificate to say she had completed the book. She was thrilled! They’ve both decided to have Paddington Bears and certificates every time they finish any workbook.
While they ate the muffins I read more about food webs from the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science and then we watched one of the suggested videos. They asked if all eagles are apex predators, so we looked up eagles in the Natural History Book, but got distracted by a page about Rüppell’s vulture so read that instead. We read about how it is adapted for its environment which also involved talking about how air gets colder and less oxygen-rich the higher you climb, which tied in with previous learning about Everest.
Into town for a new pair of glasses and a trip to the library. The librarian told us about the Summer Reading Challenge, which I have never bothered with before, but the children were pretty keen on the idea of free pencils and scratch ’n’ sniff stickers.
Back at home and after lunch we had half an hour of quiet time, which today meant reading. There were whole minutes of total silence. My daughter read Daisy and the Trouble with London, and my son read Hercules, a choose-your-own-adventure story. Neither of these are classic children’s literature, but they are good fun and would be great for reluctant readers. The Hercules is pretty gruesome and potentially scary but my two seem unbothered. (If you’re interested, I read The Children Who Lived in a Barn.) After quiet time I read Hercules aloud with them.
Then they moved onto a game of chess, followed by playing with their new balloons and making more snail farms in the garden.
Can anyone tell me what this is?
At teatime the children were joined by a friend. I read aloud from Bonkers About Beetles (we found a beetle on the way to the library). We used a ruler and weights when reading about beetle length and weight. We also practised subtracting ten, mentally and with hundred squares, and the friend introduced us to alliteration. It was a very educational tea!
Bedtime reading: Sir Scallywag and the Battle of Stinky Bottom, and various Kes Gray books. Last weekend my daughter read Daisy and the Trouble with Zoos in a single afternoon. Today she’s started 3 different Daisy books and can’t get into any of them. Imagine what it’s like trying to feed somebody this fickle.
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