Since A’s previous school started classes today, I made the decision to try to keep her on track with them…JUST in case we decided to return. So, today marked our first official day of homeschooling. I have to admit, it was really nice to just lazily roll out of bed around 8 am and not have to battle morning rush hour traffic as I’ve done in the past. We started school in our traditional way, with a First Day Of School photo.
We have made this a tradition since she was in Preschool, so I have no plans to stop. School began at 8:30. In 6th grade, students traditionally (at least, back in MY day) learned how to type. I recall learning my “asdfjkl;” on a huge, heavy, brown beast of a machine that looked something like this:
Typing class is much different these days. Download an app, click on Lesson 1 and off you go, with beautiful graphics, music, audio clips of people cheering when you do it correctly…it’s quite different from when I was 11.
When Spring Break was extended in March, A’s private school implemented distance learning so that we could finish out the school year. One of her assignments for Language Arts was to select a novel to read and to report on each chapter in different ways. Unfortunately, the school year wasn’t long enough for her to finish the book, so I encouraged her to continue reading into this year. The novel she chose is one of my all time favorites, “Anne of Green Gables” by LM Montgomery. While she read the assigned two chapters, I prepped a few educational videos I wanted her to watch later.
According to A, the best part of homeschooling is being able to lay on a comfy sofa to do her work, rather than sitting at a hard desk all day. We followed up the reading with some comprehension questions, just to make sure she read thoroughly. Leading up to lunch, we had recess, watched a Health video, two videos about owls, completed one level of conversational Spanish, and completed her first Math assignment.
Math has always been a struggle. Not that she’s not good at it, but she has never enjoyed it. So choosing a Math curriculum had to be considered very carefully. I am not the strongest in Math, myself. We finally settled on the Life of Fred series, which implements stories while teaching Math, along with a myriad of other subjects. Not only did we review a lot of concepts she’s already learned, we found out the difference between an ounce and a troy ounce, what the word Vexillology means, and who William Shakespeare was.
After lunch, it was PE time, which in our homeschool equals Irish Dance practice. Her dance teachers will be happy to know that she practiced both soft and hard shoe steps, all the while listening to me shouting “Turn out!” reminders every few minutes.
Finally, it was time for SCIENCE! All day, we had been having little “bird breaks”, learning about owls, mostly, and what owl pellets are and how they are formed. A few weeks ago, I had contacted a local organization, Blackland Prairie Raptor Center, and ordered several owl pellets to dissect. A has been so excited to look at them and see what we would find inside. We started out using tools to carefully open and pull apart the pellets, but by the end, we were digging in with our fingers, laughing about the number of vertebrae and rib bones and making up our own song about owl pellets.
All in all, I believe our first day of homeschooling was successful and fun! The best part was getting to spend quality time with my pre-teen who will be grown before we know it. This was a scary ledge to step off of, but I truly believe this journey will be the best one for our family!
Fuller Life Adventures 