Here's what happened during our second week of the homeschool semester:
Monday we continued our work in the Miquon math books. This time I just let Fish play with the math rods while I worked with Bean. Boy, oh boy, does Fish love the rods. Bean enjoys the worksheets, strangely enough. One of them was simply filling in a number chart with numbers from 1 to 99 and he really worked hard at it. It was the first time he'd ever written all the numbers to 99.
Tuesday we read some non-fiction books about the state we live in and talked about life on the Prairie. Bean really got into this. He liked the parts about history. Fish liked the coloring pages of buffalo and pioneers I printed off. Later in the day I finished Sarah, Plain and Tall with Bean and I remembered why it is one of my very favorites.
Wednesday I gave both the boys a piano lesson. Fish is now a pro at finding Middle C. Bean is starting to read notes on the staff and he finds this challenging, so much that he does not feel motivated to practice by himself. He does well when I work with him, so I need to do that more. He has a great deal of innate musical ability and now I have to ask myself the question that every mother of a music student has to ask herself: how hard do I push my child? There's all those stories about kids in tears whose mothers said "someday you'll thank me for this" and when the kid was grown up they DID thank their mom for making them practice even though they hated it.... something to ponder.
For reading on Thursday I got out the set of word magnets I bought and let Bean "earn" words to stick on the fridge. If he could read it, it went on the fridge. He kept at it for quite a long time, trying to earn more words. I think he got more than 30 of the 50 magnets.
The kids look forward to Fridays. Bean calls it "Making Day." This time we did hand sewing. Bean loves hand sewing. I set him to work making a nine-patch. Fish had never done any hand sewing before, so I got an embroidery hoop and put together a sort of applique for him to do with some space alien fabric from my scrap bag. He loved it and was so proud of it when it was done. As you can see, he insisted it be hung on the fridge:
Monday we continued our work in the Miquon math books. This time I just let Fish play with the math rods while I worked with Bean. Boy, oh boy, does Fish love the rods. Bean enjoys the worksheets, strangely enough. One of them was simply filling in a number chart with numbers from 1 to 99 and he really worked hard at it. It was the first time he'd ever written all the numbers to 99.
Tuesday we read some non-fiction books about the state we live in and talked about life on the Prairie. Bean really got into this. He liked the parts about history. Fish liked the coloring pages of buffalo and pioneers I printed off. Later in the day I finished Sarah, Plain and Tall with Bean and I remembered why it is one of my very favorites.
Wednesday I gave both the boys a piano lesson. Fish is now a pro at finding Middle C. Bean is starting to read notes on the staff and he finds this challenging, so much that he does not feel motivated to practice by himself. He does well when I work with him, so I need to do that more. He has a great deal of innate musical ability and now I have to ask myself the question that every mother of a music student has to ask herself: how hard do I push my child? There's all those stories about kids in tears whose mothers said "someday you'll thank me for this" and when the kid was grown up they DID thank their mom for making them practice even though they hated it.... something to ponder.
For reading on Thursday I got out the set of word magnets I bought and let Bean "earn" words to stick on the fridge. If he could read it, it went on the fridge. He kept at it for quite a long time, trying to earn more words. I think he got more than 30 of the 50 magnets.
The kids look forward to Fridays. Bean calls it "Making Day." This time we did hand sewing. Bean loves hand sewing. I set him to work making a nine-patch. Fish had never done any hand sewing before, so I got an embroidery hoop and put together a sort of applique for him to do with some space alien fabric from my scrap bag. He loved it and was so proud of it when it was done. As you can see, he insisted it be hung on the fridge:
Here's Bean working on his nine-patch.
I will confess that Friday night the boys were saying "Yay, tomorrow's Saturday! No school!" but when I countered that with "Don't you like school?" they said "Yes, but it will be nice to have a day off."
My sentiments exactly.
My sentiments exactly.
1 comment:
Thanks so much for the update. Keep 'em coming. (I feel some kind of structure for our unschooling coming on soon. ;o)
As for piano, I have some thoughts on that, as I was one of those kids whose mother pushed them when they didn't want to practice. (And yes, I'm glad now.) They (my thoughts) aren't conclusive, but they may provide food for thought. But they won't fit here, so I'll blog 'em soon. (I thought I already had, but I can't find the post now.)
Have a great weekend!
Post a Comment