When Public School Comes to a Stand Still
All around me public schools were closed this week due to extremely cold weather. Yet, homeschool at least in my household, continued. I heard about a school district who decided to make “blizzard bags” for their students. In these bags they decided to put 5 worksheets to counteract the missed days of school and the 5 worksheets would then be equivalent to…. wait for it… 2 school days. That doesn’t include any reading assignments, just worksheets.
Hmmm. 5 worksheets = 2 school days. That would mean that in my homeschool this week we finished the equivalent of apx. 10 days of school. It’s quite funny to me that so many people assume my child is sitting home playing all day, when our public schools are spouting 5 worksheets for 2 days as a fair exchange of education.
Bible:
Studying about his name-sake this week, Jonathan. I love the stories around Jonathan’s life. He was such a loyal friend to David, but more than that he was such an obedient servant to God. He knew that he was not going to inherit the throne because God chose David, but he still protected and loved David. Such a pure heart to put his friends need above his own place. What an honorable name-sake for my son. I think this was the first time that Little Man identified directly with the Jonathan of the Bible and he found that he liked Jonathan quite a lot.
Math:
Oh sometimes teaching math to an advanced learner is really hard. I’ve known a long time that having a child who is gifted educationally can be difficult but this week perfectionism and emotional intensity regarding math were at their highest. So while math was completed know that it wasn’t an easy process for us this week, which is not the norm in our home.
Language Arts:
For grammar he worked on possessive nouns, and ordering items in a sentence using commas. In his proofreading assignment he struggled a bit with a run-on sentence. There is this strange thing that happens with him when the answer isn’t obvious. It’s kind of like he shuts down mentally. I don’t know but I think some run-on sentence practice is in order.
For writing he wrote this fabulous story about a boy and his dad going fishing and the boy ended up teaching the dad the best ways to catch fish. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that he has found his writing voice!
Literature:
I’m allowing Little Man time to read for the sake of reading for interest rather than an assignment. This is him reading this week. Doesn’t that look fabulous? I wish I had time to read for fun.
Science:
In science alone my son completed 4 notebooking pages, and read 10 pages of text, and looked up some interesting information on reptiles of the sea on the internet. That was the approximate work of 3 hours of education in my homeschool.
Music:
Little Man had piano practice this week, he practiced his fingering exercises and Arabesque by Friederich Burgmuller, Plaisir, D’ Amour, by Giovanni Martini. He also practiced his song for his voice lesson: I Don’t Need Anything but You, from the musical Annie.
Physical Education:
I don’t usually put information about P.E. in This Week, however since I’m doing a comparison post I thought perhaps I should. In Homeschool Gym this week, the children did warm ups, played gym hockey and team dodge ball.
Logic and Strategy:
(with some socialization thrown in **wink**)
This was our chess club week. He learned about rank and file on the chess board and can I just say, I had no idea about that. I was pretty excited to meet my blogging friend +Colleen Kessler at chess club as she was visiting with our mutual friend +Amy Stults.
What was your homeschool week like? Feel free to link up below if you are a blogger, or leave me a comment and let’s chat about it.
I agree that it is crazy that 5 worksheets = 2 days of public school. I like homeschooling with lots of time for learning AND lots of time for playing.
I so agree.
I love, love, love hearing about your weeks. I love the large map on the bedroom wall. Thank you for hosting.
Thank you Phyllis, You are such an encouragement to me each week. I got the idea from Pinterest, On the far wall there is a US map too. I ran out of wall space in the classroom so I felt this was the perfect solution for both bedroom decor and classroom space saving! Plus he loves geography!
It is scary what the PS will say passes for a day of work sometimes…
RE: the emotional intensity and shutting down when he doesn’t know the answer – I already see this in my gifted son, Daniel. He would rather NOT try than to do something he’s never done and might not be good at. So frustrating for him and me! It why we’re being really laid back and following his lead instead of pushing to fly ahead of the curve. I’m so glad he was not my first child to homeschool, I think it would have been a struggle because I wasn’t as comfortable in my relaxed homeschool skin back then. 😉
Ah yes, I am pretty laid back about school too after 6 years! He is very good at listening for clues and getting to the answer before I get to it, but in this case he was just missing the clues. Once I pointed it out he was like, Yeah I knew that, I just wasn’t thinking about it. LOL
Thank you for hosting and your post. It made me realize how much I actually do miss teaching my kids. I think my panic may not have been so momentary…
You are welcome, Now I’m curious and have to hop over to see what your panic was about.
Wow you are so productive even in that coldness! I think that winter has sucked all the life out of me! Do you use any specific sources for notebooking? Nice to see you again! I love seeing what you’ve done each week. You are proving to be a great resource 🙂
Hi Heather,
If you are referring to the Science notebooking we use Apologia Exploring Creation Sciences this year we are doing Swimming Creatures, so we use the notebooking journal that comes with that.