Ok, so obviously I'm having trouble keeping up with trying to post our daily activities, and have been for awhile. Since I'm in the groove of finding ways to fit in those things that I feel are important for my kids, my family, and myself, I am going to try to take the blogging pressure off myself, and switch to doing weekly wrap-ups rather than trying to post as things happen. Of course, I'll still toss up big things and special events, etc, but as far as my "record keeping" (which is why I really blog to begin with!), I'll drop back to just posting about the more important stuff from the week.
My big accomplishment for this week was re-starting up our routine of taking morning walks to start our school day. It's still darn chilly in the mornings, but I think we're all feeling the benefits of getting out and walking more, and it's just such a lovely way to get in our movement and exercise for the morning. We still follow up with a cultural dance (right now we're dancing a type of Scottish Jig, to the Scottish folk song "Aiken Drum"), followed by a spin and fold type sensory integration sequence to make sure we're grounded before we start our seated work.
I also managed to fit in little 15-minute-or-so cleaning session each day to help us try to reorganize our work and living spaces. The kids have actually cheerfully chipped in, so I have hope to get this place manageable again soon. (They are motivated knowing that if we get it all cleaned up, they can invite friends to come over! It's been a long winter of doing our visiting elsewhere, they are ready to have some social fun here.)
We're in our "Intersession" between sessions at our Monday Homeschool Classes. This week I led a workshop on Letterboxing, where we launched the brand-new "MHC Letterboxing Club." The plan is to offer letterboxing field trips throughout the summer and during intersession.
My kids were really excited about the idea of combining two of their favorite activities -- getting together with other homeschool friends, and letterboxing. During the workshop, the kids made their own stamps for letterboxing and put together a packet with the things they needed. We also played an in-museum letterboxing game since the weather outside was frightful. We had 16 kids ranging in age from 2 to 12, and everyone seemed to have fun!
In club business, our first task was to design a letterboxing stamp to include in the first box we plant. This is the design I came up with after soliciting ideas for what should be included from the kids (this covered most of their ideas).
The Map Man then took the design, did the lettering and formatting, and returned it to me for the artwork. He then created a digital file of the whole thing and sent it off to the Stamp Works to have the stamp professionally made. The club will take the stamp and assemble a letterbox, which we will plant during our first letterboxing field trip, to be held in couple of weeks.
As part of our Scottish cultural theme, we are reciting Scottish Poetry. Each week I post a new poem, which we recite every morning before starting our main lesson. The poem also becomes the basis of our daily handwriting practice:
In addition to handwriting practice, the boys also have independent work with math word problems (using various workbooks for that purpose), drilling of addition and subtraction facts (using Kumon workbooks), and reading comprehension exercises (using Teacher Created Resource's Nonfiction Reading Comprehension workbooks on various Science, Geography, History, and Informational topics). They both really enjoy the math worksheets and taking the quizzes about the articles they are reading (and they enjoy quizzing each other too!).
In addition to the independent work, I also read aloud a short passage (that I make up) with 4 math problems embedded in them that have something to do with a story we've ready recently (or with a real life event that has recently occurred). There is one problem each of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (not necessarily in that order), and the main point of the exercise is for the boys to be able to pluck out the important information from the passage, and identify which math process is involved. The problems themselves are actually very simple to solve, because I don't want the kids bogged down (and then frustrated) by heavy math during this exercise.
One example from this week was "The fox climbing into the man's basket and started throwing out fish, which his brother then collected. The first time, he tossed out 1 fish. Then he tossed out 2 fish. Then he tossed out 3 fish. Then he tossed out the rest of the fish in the basket, which was 6. How many fish did the foxes have for dinner that night? (1+2+3+6=12) The foxes ate 4 fish apiece for dinner, how many fish were eaten? (2x4=8) How many fish were left over for breakfast? (12-8=4) How many fish could each fox eat for breakfast? (4/2=2)
Speaking of those two foxes, they were a part of another of our Scottish Trickster Tales. These are the boys' drawings and summaries from that story.
As usual, J attended his group Social Skills class with his therapist, and Zoo Boy saw his speech therapist for a session. Afterwards, we went to J's piano and guitar lessons, where we also added in a bit of vocal coaching as well, working with his solo for his upcoming chorus concert, then a bit of social time with his teacher's family (who are good friends of ours). We also had the usual array of dance classes this week, plus extra rehearsals for an upcoming event tonight (more on that in my next post!).
We spent a bit of time discussing the upcoming summer, and what each boy would like to get out of it. J is going to be doing a bunch of dancing, including a week long Modern workshop and a 2 week long Ballet intensive in addition to a summer class schedule, so he doesn't feel like he needs anything more in terms of organized activities - he'd like to go to the lake a lot, and spend time having fun with friends. Zoo Boy would like some sort of camp experience, but doesn't want to go for a full day, so he has me looking into options for him, and hoping I can find something to pique his interest that coincides with J's full days, so maybe I can get a few hours to myself for fall planning. He also wants to spend lot of time at the lake and having fun with friends.
And that's mostly what I want out of this coming summer -- lots of fun with friends! And a little time to plan for the fall.
It was a lighter week for us commitment wise -- pretty much everyone in this part of the world was on school break, so we didn't have most of our usual activities. In fact, other than Jazz class and Tap class, we had NONE of our usual activities. It was kind of nice to slow down and just enjoy a bit of free time! We spent as much of it outdoors as the weather (which was, for the most part, rainy and cold) allowed.
On Monday we lead our newly formed Letterboxing Club on it's first outing. We followed the clues to try and find 9 letterboxes. We managed to locate 5 of them, which I consider a pretty successful day, since we were letterboxing in a highly used park, and letterboxes in those sorts of places tend to go missing more frequently than boxes in more remote locales. We actually had a really nice day for our trip, especially considering how the rest of the week went.
That night, despite the drizzle (and partly because of it), we burned a bunch of wood from our recent clearing out of one of our outdoor storage areas. Zoo Boy suggested S'mores, so I ran down to the local corner store and grabbed a stale bag of marshmallows and their last 3 Hershey bars (they've not put up S'mores supplies yet, as the weather's not been very campfire-conducive so far -- in fact, the only box of Graham Crackers they had on their shelf was more outdated than the expired box I had at home, so I went with our box!). I also ran into the Packie next door to grab a few Mike's for The Man and myself. Here's The Map Man enjoying a warm spot by the fire with his treats.
J roasts a marshmallow -- the kids were already in their PJs when they realized we had a good roasting fire going, so they donned sweatshirts, raincoats, and rain boots and came out to join us. Fires and S'mores are a summertime tradition with us, and the fact that it was cold and raining didn't dampen their enthusiasm to jump-start the season!
Zoo Boy in gooey marshmallow heaven....
