Our subject this week, chosen by Abaigeal, is Poetry. We watched the Brain Pop Jr video and learned about acrostic poems, free verse, shape poems, rebus poems, and haiku. Later this week we’ll get a poetry anthology out and read some famous poems. Right now the girls are writing poems.
Update: Both finished!
I’m starting a new category, High Tide. We’re picking a subject and diving in in depth, for a week or more. I ask the girls what they want to learn about and if they can’t think of anything then I get to pick. Our starting point is Brain Pop and Brain Pop Jr, and we watch the movie on the subject in question. Then the girls take the quizzes and then they immediately disappear to do something inspired by the movie as they are bursting with ideas by that point.
So far it’s working great. As long as we keep the grumpies away we’ll continue this indefinitely.
We have the room, it’s just not usable because Bede comes in and gets in our stuff. I really want a screen door between the living and dining room. It would keep out the more destructive people (Bede, Trixie) while I could still keep an eye on them – which is not the case when we use Faith and Abby’s room with the door closed.
I got the SIngapore Maths I ordered: 1A and 2B, with the home instructor guides as well. Also upgraded our Brain Pop subscription to Pop, Jr, and (we won’t use this, it was free) Espanol. Faith and Abby just finished Little House on Boston Bay and are now reading Henry and Ribsy. Also Calvin and Hobbes, which is educational in a different way, no? Also we got The Children’s Book of Virtues and the Children’s Book of America, trying to read from those at night over dinner.
read this aloud tonight, discussed sea level, and stick-to-it ness.
hope to read at dinner from now on.
I’m starting some schoolier things with the girls to fill in gaps.
We’ve been doing the Miquon and we’re adding in some Singapore Math as well. I liked the SIngapore we got before and they’re ready for the next levels now, so that’s on the list. I also want to get the Sonlight instructor guides for Core 1+2 so we can do some in our own timeframe.
All of this will last for a while then ebb out, like it always does. I’ve learned to go with the flow, whether it’s no schooly things at all or something schooly every day. So starting mid-January it’s high tide time!
I’m feeling like an unschooling failure because I can’t do as much as I’d like. I’m going to get a good life science book, a good American History book, and some representative historical fiction and inflict it all on the children during lunch. Even if they tune me out (unlikely) I’ll at least feel like I’ve done something to expose them to Interesting Things.
Brain Pop is handy for limited things but it has no meat. Just enough to get you mildly interested, but no direction to further resources.
We’re reading from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. This morning Sean retold the story of King Canute and the Ocean, and then Faith retold it later by making it a Zimmer Twins movie, “Queen Eva and the Ocean.”
I wonder what Charlotte Mason would think.
Faith requested miquon today, and did several pages. We had to stop because we were Bede-ed.
Abby has been making some really funny movies on Zimmer Twins.
Asking to “do school”, Gilbert did the Short /a/ workbook on Starfall in pencil. He hold the pencil correctly and writes very neatly without being taught; I think it is genetic from his father.
Faith and I discussed why the seams have popped on some of our garments and not on others, even when the items have gotten equal wear. After thinking it over, she decided that it was likely that certain materials were stronger than others and in this case cotton thread was much weaker than polyester. We also noticed that our hand-dyed items with cotton thread had dyed threads too, while poly thread remained white.
