Monday, August 17, 2009

We jumped back in... a little early.

My husband didn't like my observation that school doesn't happen when he is home that I made in my last post. He doesn't like the thought that he somehow throws our schedule off. So this morning he decided we should do school. I wasn't totally prepared to do all our subjects and I still haven't made us a checklist of things to cover each day but we got started on things that I did have ready.

We started our day with reading Book of Mormon Stories for Young Latter Day Saints. This is an old out of print book that my Mom remembers from her childhood. She has collected a few copies so when I saw it on her shelf I thought it would be fun to read through with the kids. It is a little more advanced than the Book of Mormon Stories reader which we have already read through a number of times. This old book goes through the Book of Mormon chronologically so it started with the stories of the Brother of Jared. Sophie especially liked the illustrations.

We jumped into our table work next. Ian and Sophie did some Math. They just picked up where they left off a month or two ago. Sophie needs to review her multiplication tables again, but Ian actually did even better at his math than I remember him doing before. Henry did some cutting from his Kumon cutting book. Ian also did a lesson from his Explode the code book too. He had trouble focusing on this after already doing his math so next time we wont try to do one right after the other. Maybe a break will be better.

We started our Science today. I broke out the dollar store poster of the Periodic table, I had picked up months ago and we looked at it for awhile and then hung it up on the wall. And then we read a few pages of What's smaller than a pygmy shrew? which is the first book from our Chemistry curriculum. (Yes I sprung for the more expensive chemistry program. I just loved the idea of reading all these great books for chemistry and having them on hand sounded so nice. I won't have to worry about trying to find the books at the library or replacing one with something else if the library doesn't have it.)

We even added in Latin today too. I picked up this latin book last spring and planned to work it into our year. We did the first lesson, which was just the introduction of our first Latin word. It seems like a strange one to start with but the kids had fun. The word was Nauta so we talked about nauta and then found a few ways we use this latin root in our words today. Then the kids drew a picture of a Nauta. Sophie drew a sailor and Ian drew an Astronaut.
So it was a start at learning some latin roots.

That is about all we formally covered today and will be adding some history, art, music, poetry, grammar and all the other subjects that we weren't ready to do today. But it was a start... and I can tell it is going to be difficult to juggle school work with a baby. With Dad home to give the kids the one on on time they needed with Math and such we were able to do it. But once it is just me.... everything may be a lot more crazy!

1 comment:

Bibliophile said...

I was always eager to get back to school, so starting in mid-August is a winner with me. I hope the children will be enthusiastic about the subjects. I think Latin is especially good, since that "dead" language is a basis for many words in English. I wish I were sitting there with them!