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Our Homeschooling Plan for the first week of October 2016

Isabelle and I will be visiting Italy, France, Sri Lanka, England, Jamaica, and Vermont this week as we gather ingredients for our apple pie as we read "How to make an Apple Pie and See the World"!


Of course we'll locate those locations on our world and US maps and read about their cultures and languages. We're learning Italian this year. I will have to see how many of the other languages we can find on Duolingo. In our language studies, we'll touch on humor in writing, repetition, and pantomime. In art studies, we'll learn about drawing street scenes, humor in art, and contrast. For math, in addition to the math learning loop I am setting up away from our Five in a Row studies, we'll see subtraction in action and learn about liquid and dry measure. And finally in science, we'll play with salt and evaporation and learn more about fresh food for health.


In my own reading last week, I came across a teaching method called looping. In the example, the student had about 12 different math activities listed (saxon math curriculum, math games, online learning sites, etc) and she would spend 10 - 15 minutes on each activity or until a certain goal had been achieved, then move on to the next activity for an hour designated the math hour. By doing all different types of activities, she doesn't get bored and experiences math in different contexts. I'm excited to set something like this up for Isabelle because, let's face it, worksheets are boring, learning 3d geometry figures on the computer doesn't work, and movement makes everybody happy.


Last week, we finished up "Little House in the Big Woods" and will move onto "Little House on the Prairie" this week. Isabelle is solidly reading level 2 readers and of course we have a whole basket of picture books that go along with our FIAR book.




As always, Monday is our library day, Wednesday is Park Day, and we'll be visiting friends on Friday for our standing play date. Special projects this week include making and canning applesauce, baking an apple pie, incorporating music and movement into our days, and finding constellations in the night sky. This is a combination of things I want to do and things Isabelle has talked about wanting to do.

  Why do we homeschool? Freedom!
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