How We Homeschooled Today #78

Sewing, spelling, sperm whales

Pen Pal Exchange

If your child would like a pen pal, the How We Homeschool Pen Pal Exchange is here to help. Over 50 children matched so far. Leave a comment or e-mail me with your child’s age and home country and I’ll get to work. Today I heard the exchange has just been publicised by the Australian Home Education Association!

All children welcome, however they are educated, and please feel free to share. Spreading friendship and literacy one letter at a time!

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(If you’re new here, my daughter is 7 and my son is 5.)

A day at home after the bright lights and excitement of yesterday’s trip to the West End. The Joint Grannies had bought the children a baby Simba soft toy each, and this morning my daughter was filled with the desire to make mittens and socks for hers. I said we needed to do some work first, so by 9am we had…

• Done 1 new spelling for my son and revised another 15 words for my daughter

• Revised a few Multiplication by Heart cards

• Done Khan Academy for my daughter and Number Hive for my son (he is obsessed with this game and would gladly play it every day).

So my daughter and I got out our sewing boxes (I don’t want to give the misleading impression that I sit darning every evening; normally our sewing boxes sit gathering dust from one month to the next). I showed her how to take baby Simba’s measurements with a tape measure, draw the shape on paper, pin the paper to the felt, and cut it out. Then we tacked the pieces together prior to sewing them. Simba is now the proud owner of two red mittens and one blue sock.

(At 10.30 I realised we had completely forgotten to go to Athletics Club because yours truly had no idea what day it was…)

At some point during the sewing she/I had a break and the children listened to audiobooks: Ladybird Audio Adventures Animal Kingdom, and Stig of the Dump.

(The children were very excited to realise that last night I had forgotten to put the usual French and Greek on their daily lists (memory is obviously failing me this week!). But, I am pleased to report that at odd moments during the day we revised our new Greek question, and learnt the French word for lion cub.)

This afternoon we went to the park, and I tried to read John Adams but felt I was interrupted every 30 seconds by children needing help/wanting an audience/needing a mediator/peace-keeper. When we got home I read aloud from Whales To The Rescue. This is in the same series as Bringing Back the Wolves, which regular readers know I adore. So far the Whales book is also excellent: lots of information, good detail, incredible facts (a blue whale’s heart is so big a ten year old child could stand inside with her arms outstretched!). As well as the expected marine biology it takes in geography and chemistry too, and we haven’t yet got to the end. The children are especially enjoying all the information about whale poop and how important it is for the food chain, and I am enjoying the comparison of land versus marine food webs.

Out into the garden to play with friends, at which point they didn’t interrupt me every 30 seconds and I managed to write this.

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