How We Homeschooled Today #61

Vikings and Lion Kings

(For new readers, my daughter is 7 and my son is 5.)

• A rather slow start. I woke up early (by accident. Never on purpose.) and listened to a podcast about the 12th Century renaissance—trying to improve my medieval knowledge in preparation for this year’s history studies. My daughter drew herself a colouring book which she stapled together and then proceeded to colour in.

• After breakfast my son did another few words of his sentence from Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, while I sat next to him and reminded him about the right way to form his letters. My daughter was really reluctant and did most of a page of her Jolly Phonics writing book (but balked at the idea of writing a story, which was part of the work), and chose a spelling to practise in her spelling book (see yesterday if this means nothing). It was a very easy spelling she has known for several years, so not exactly work. But, baby steps.

  

  Did Heaney envisage this as handwriting practice for 5 year olds? Perhaps not, but it’s working for us.

• Then I offered them a choice of two maths activities and they chose both. The first was a homemade version of Proof. You lay out 9 number cards and when a player sees a maths fact they can make with the cards they shout out the answer, and if the fact is correct they keep the cards and you fill in the gaps with new ones. I like it because each child can work at whatever level is appropriate to them. If you want to make your own, I recommend a lot (between 1/3 and 1/2 of the deck) of 1-10s, especially 1, 2, 5, and 10. And the big numbers can obviously go as high as your child is comfortable with. The manufacturers say they exclude ‘tricky primes’.

• The second maths activity was Number Hive, kindly forwarded to me by a friend recently. The aim is to get 4 in a row using multiplication facts. From a quick look at the website it looks like you can also get versions to practise factors, decimals, and lots more. We really enjoyed it and it was a nice way to combine multiplication and strategy. There are games available to purchase, and an app, but you can also download free printables here (you just have to give them an e-mail address).

• After that we had a break—Lego for the children, housework for me (is housework a break? Let’s move swiftly on)—which I thought was a good idea, but they proved very reluctant to bring the break to an end. We did manage it, without too much grumpiness on my part, and revised our new Ancient Greek words, French conversation, and added a new French question and answer (I must stress, the French is extremely basic. Please don’t imagine we are nattering away for hours on end.) Then, despite telling me they hate French and don’t want to learn it, they both requested that I read a French book to them (Max et Mathilde, which I picked up in a phone box library recently). And then we listened to a little of the Beth Manners French songs.

• This afternoon their dad (The Common Reader, if you’re new here) took them to see The Lion King in the cinema, which was my son’s first cinema outing. They’ve seen it before and love it so we thought it would be a fun treat. For my daughter it was, but for my son the music and the effect on a big screen was “very emotional” and resulted in many tears at the end.

  

  Vikings at sea, from Vikingestkibs Museet, a good source of Viking info.

• Back at home for tea, we watched the first part of a rather brilliant video tour of a 2014 British Museum exhibition about the Vikings. It’s long, and not aimed at children, but my two really enjoyed it and we will definitely watch the rest at some point.

• Reading in bed: Ramona and her Father, Illustrated Tales of King Arthur, and a Pokemon comic.

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Pen pal exchange

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All children welcome (homeschooled or not), and please feel free to share.

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