Half-baked Homeschool

As a former science teacher, I should be leading my children in mind-blowing activities and experiments followed by enlightening and insightful analysis each week, right? If so, I'm in big trouble. You see, I didn't receive much of a history education myself, so I'm enjoying and focusing there. That's where I would sit if I could, and we'd address science in middle school. After all, I've been there and done all that science stuff before. My children, however, have not, and they are fascinated with all things science.

Despite my background, I was struggling with how to teach something like Biology at a level that would be interesting and helpful to my young boys (which is why my then first grader knew, and still knows, all the major invertebrate phyla). So I began to search for a science curriculum, and I didn't care for most of them. I will go into my objections to most of what's out there some other time, but I did finally find something I love. It's called Real Science 4 Kids, and it's written by homeschool mom and biochemical physicist (no, no one knows what that is) Dr. Rebecca Keller.

Even better, one of my homeschool friends was interested in using the same curriculum with her two boys - instant co-op! We've done pretty well at this, but Friday is our science day, and so it's also the day that people go out of town, have relatives coming in, go on field trips, etc.

Real Science 4 Kids has several levels and covers Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and (they're working on) Earth Science. We started with the lowest level Physics for our first 10 week term. We won't quite manage to get everything in within the 10 weeks, but hey, we did succeed at setting up the "Lemon Battery".




Aside from such organized lessons, there are always the opportunistic science activities, many of which involve nature study.

On a recent trip to the Sea Grove beach on the Florida panhandle, dh corralled a crab into a bucket (not without first suffering a small laceration from the cornered crab's claw) and we watched as he burrowed backward into the sand.


We also visited Gulf World in Panama City Beach on that trip, which was not exactly Sea World, but then, I wasn't exactly looking for Sea World crowds. We did learn some interesting things about marine animals, including what they eat:


Yep, I'm raising little biochemical physicists all right. Yes, indeedy.

Did you ever start something, fall behind, and then resist picking it up again because you were so far behind that the thought of catching up overwhelmed you? So it is with the blog for me. I also had this ridiculous idea that I would blog after all of my other work was finished. You know, instead of sitting around twiddling my thumbs as I usually do.

One of the purposes of this blog is to log our homeschooling activities and accomplishments. In the six weeks since I last posted we've been working our way through the humanities curricula for third grade and kindergarten provided by the hybrid school we're using this year, while continuing with our own math and science programs. The boys, especially Bearclaw, have been challenged by the amount of work required for the humanities program.

Shortbread's kindergarten class at the hybrid program is focusing on early phonics and handwriting as they go through a set of "letterbooks". As you can imagine, there is one book for each letter. They are cute, but on the first day of use, Shortbread exclaimed, "That looks like a baby book!" He had a point. However, he's warmed to using them and loves going to class, taking part in "sharing time", and playing with his friends.

Bearclaw's class puts a heavy emphasis on grammar, using both Shurley English and some exercises from Easy Grammar. The best thing to come from this is their recent work in writing, which has helped Bearclaw learn to outline and write a 3-point expository paragraph. This is not something I expected him to be able to do this year, and I'm happy to have had the help of his teacher in working on it.

The third grade curriculum also includes spelling, vocabulary, and critical thinking, but history consumes the bulk of time not spent on grammar. Using Biblioplan and SOTW, we've been using Bearclaw's history work as our family history study. Currently we are studying the early colonial period of America, beginning with Jamestown and moving on to Plymouth Plantation. Our studies have included investigating the Native American populations that the colonists were in contact with, and the growth of the slave trade in North America. We've also looked at what was happening in Europe during this time, including the government of England and Scotland and the Thirty Years' War. Throughout it all, we've seen the overarching impact of the divide between Protestantism and Roman Catholocism.

Here are some of the highlights:

The first day of classes-

Making Native American pinchpots and colonial hand-dipped candles-

Making hasty pudding as the Indians taught the colonists-

And making homemade shortbread when we studied Scotland-

So now I think it's time I joined Kris's Weekly Wrap-Ups. Six weeks of review forces me to drag around too many photos!

I have composed this post once already, but I erased it after I read it. Reading an end-of-year assessment in prose is a real snoozer. I'll try a more visually organized format, which may still be boring, but at least it's easier to scan with your eye.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to include in my state-required assessment. Oh, I could look it up, but that would mean dedicating more time to this. And I've already spent way too long fighting with Blogger as I tried to single-space my Reading list.

So these are the highlights of what Bearclaw accomplished in 2nd grade language arts over the past school year:

Curricula:

Writing - Writing With Ease: Level 2
Grammar - First Language Lessons
Spelling - Spelling Power
Handwriting - homemade worksheets
Literature/Reading - see book list


Skills and Knowledge (acquired this year):

Writing

• narrates both short and longer (avg. 800 words) of read-aloud material unaided
• copies up to three sentences from dictation, with correct use of captalization and punctuation
• composes brief book reports with a beginning, middle, and end
• writes legibly; beginning to write with greater speed

Grammar and Spelling

• identifies and gives examples of: nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, articles, contractions, and preposition
• spells words containing spelling patterns typical for second grade
• uses and spells some common contractions and abbreviations correctly

Reading/Literature

• reads assigned books at an average Lexile level of 800-1000
• reads voluntarily at least 30 min./day

Reading List

The Knight at Dawn - Osborne

"Beowulf" from Favorite Medieval Tales - Osborne

The Sword in the Tree - Bulla

The Viking Adventure - Bulla

The Making of a Knight - O'Brien

The Minstrel in the Tower -Skurzynski

Castle Diary -Platt

Robinhood of Sherwood Forest - McGovern

Raisel's Riddle - Silverman

Baboushka and the Three Kings - Robbins

The Apple and the Arrow - Buff

Pedro's Journal- Conrad

Fine Print - Burch

The Whipping Boy - Fleischman

I'm glad that's out of the way. On to history tomorrow.