This is a glimpse into a week of our homeschooling life that I captured a few weeks ago.
First of all, the following is a perfect example of why I love home schooling. On Sunday night of this particular week, we drove home after visiting family and our kids were looking at the stars as we drove home, discussing what stars were, Who made them, and talking about our solar system. When we got home, we put the youngest 2 kids to bed and then took our oldest outside to our back yard to look for the Big Dipper after we had looked it up on the internet and had shown her a picture of it. We then found the North Star (Polaris) and discussed how the North Star was used for navigation. I was pretty excited to find the Little Dipper for the first time - haha! We then tucked her into bed and let her sleep in until she woke up the next morning since we had stayed up late star-gazing.
Home schooling our 1st grader usually takes about 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. On this particular week I think we fit in her full week of school work into 3 days. The flexibility of home schooling is a huge plus.
We usually start out the day with our Bible reading & history. In the above picture, she is learning about the Passover. This led to a discussion about how the Passover points us to Jesus, the Lamb of God, and how His blood covers our sin when it's applied to our hearts so that God's judgment will "pass over" us when He sees the blood of Jesus applied to our sins.
Nathanael often does playdough at the table while we do our lessons.
Working on her Singapore math workbook.
Working on Rod & Staff "Going on Eagerly" workbook, which focuses on following directions, thinking skills, cutting and pasting, patterns, etc. Nathanael is looking at a colouring page I printed off.
We read our chapter book read-aloud (Reddy Fox) during lunch time this day. We read one chapter a day and have discussion questions about the passage to work on listening and comprehension and character building.
Reading/Phonic lesson for the day. She is using Pathway Readers and workbooks. I usually write new concepts or review concepts on a white board.
Here she is reading her reading selection for the day from her Pathway Book.
Working on her Pathway workbook, which has a grammar/spelling/vocab/reading comprehension lesson that corresponds to the passage she was reading in her reader.
Social Studies. We are working through Canada, My Country curriculum. Lately we have been working on labeling the oceans, talking about the east and west coasts of Canada, finding the St Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, learning provinces, and learning about the Appalachian region of Canada.
One benefit of home schooling is plenty of time to learn practical skills. She was so excited to peel her own potato!
Yep, still in pajamas today! This is her Going on Eagerly workbook again.
Doing a poem with actions to reinforce the history & Bible lessons we are learning this week.
A Reason for Handwriting Book A, which is a Bible-based printing program.
Science. Learning about migrating birds & butterflies. Learning about clouds, snow, and rain.
Doing an experiment with cottonballs and water to understand cloud formation and the water cycle.
Art time. Here, she is making a quail (which went along with our Bible lesson about God providing the quail and manna in the desert).
This week she also worked on learning how to clean the bathroom. She has been BEGGING me to teach her this for awhile, so I finally took the time to give her a thorough lesson :-D
She spent a long time colouring in her calendar today. She loves art & has been really into colouring lately. She also has her history book open (History for Little Pilgrims).I think we were learning about the 10 Commandments & the Golden Calf this day.
Reading from our chapter book with a little monkey on my lap (she was terribly clingy this day).
Singapore Math Textbook.
Number bonds. Learning about Methods of Subtraction. The top picture is her Singapore Math textbook. The bottom picture is her workbook.
Reading lesson from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We have mostly abandoned this book (she only has a handful of lessons left) in favour for Pathway Readers. But since she had finished her First Steps book and workbook, we took a break from the Pathway program to do a lesson from this book before we start the new Pathway Reader Days Go By.
The pictures are only a glimpse of what our official "schooling" looks like during a week (not all of this was from one day!). We also use online games to learn, French youtube videos, educational dvds, library books, I teach her music lessons, and they pretty much get as much time to play outside as they want. The short school day means lots of time for exploring, playing, learning while just doing life, and time for building family relationships. It's not always "fun" for me everyday and it can feel overwhelming at times, I'll admit, but all in all, I really do love home schooling and getting to spend so much time learning alongside my little jewels.
