Homeschooling Setember

But it's a good thing I started early for wiggle room. The student I tutor needs me for 3.5 hours per day the next 3 weeks and then I'm done. The tutoring seems to disrupt the homeschooling a bit for some reason, but we are a month ahead, so three weeks won't kill us.

So far she has learned the sound and lowercase form of:
l
o
g
h
t

She is blending sounds to read and unblending to spell very well.

Recently, she started doing written single digit addition and is pretty excited about that.

Next week her letter is A and we are going on an apple picking field trip and making applesauce and apple crisp.

So far, so good, and we are having FUN which is the most important thing.

How's everyone else coming?
-Jo

Last week there was no homeschooling, except a little French in the van and lots of (OK, some) reading.

This week we will get back to our lessons plus:

An apple-picking field trip on Tuesday. We have read How An Apple Grows a few times, and we will do some fun cooking with the apples we pick like making applesauce and apple crisp, and we will read The Apple Cake too.

If I can manage to blast through the letter Pp, our letter of the week will be Aa, which would be a great match with all these apple activities.

DD got a triops growing kit and a crystal growing kit for her birthday. We will set up one of those, and our second set of monarch chrysalids should hatch this week as well. I also need to send in the coupon from the ant farm for ants.

That should keep us busy!
-Jo

She blew through the Pp lessons with no difficulty except writing some of the lowercase form of some of the letters. I used my StartWrite program to print some practice right on the back of her Aa pages!

She also did one math lesson, she just loves math. Lucky.

Next we read two books, The Apple Cake, which is such a gorgeous book and then the non-fiction, How an Apple Grows, which we have read twice before. Then we went out to check out our three apple trees in out yard. We gathered some drops to cut open, and she collected the seeds and then went back outside to plant them.

Later when I go to pick up DS15 from soccer I'm going to buy one of each variety of apple in the store, and we'll hold a taste test.

Tomorrow I had hoped to go apple picking with two or three other homeschooling families, but the TV says showers and thunderstorms, so I don't know. DD also seems to have a fever, although she is showing no other signs of illness. Near the orchard is the oldest log cabin in the nation, which is set up the way a home would be in the 1760s. Unfortunately, it's only open Thurs-Sun so maybe putting it off until Thursday or Friday would allow us a side trip there too.

Anyway, we're back on track, and it's feeling really good. I love homeschooling.

-Jo

P.S. I ended up substituting for the music teacher last Friday afternoon. I had both kindergarten classes, and they were very, very challenging. It made me even more excited about our decision to keep her home.

Josie picked up her primer today and read on her own for a while. She's really coming along. She did some math baseball on the computer--100% right, must be time to work on something else--and Lou did some writing practice today. Current read-aloud is "Little Men" (sequel to "Little Women") and we're also listening to "The Children's Homer," after she saw some of the Odyssey mini-series the other night. Josie really loves mythology.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

We've been playing a lot of Blokus! It's pretty fun, even Dad plays with us sometimes.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

We've been a bit scattered this week.

We did go apple picking on Tuesday, and it was great. DD picked half a bushel of MacIntosh, and then we bought half pecks of honeycrisp and yellow bellflower.

On Wednesday we made applesauce, and it was amazingly good. We also did a taste test with a MacIntosh, a honeycrisp, a yellow bellflower, and a red delicious from the store. That was fun, it's amazing how different they tasted. We also got in some regular lessons.

Thurday we went to our first Franklin County Homeschool Group meeting. They are reading Farmer Boy and doing related activities. We just heard about it on Wednesday, so havn't read any of the book yet, but we went and played a fun game of tossing and catching a large embroidery hoop with two sticks. We also did a native edible plant identification walk and made nature journals. I'm amazed how into it DD was. Her journal is beautiful! Then we made tea from fresh applemint and chamomille and had that with gingerbread someone made from an 1800s recipe. It was really fun.

Today we have to go run some stupid errands for DH, so while we are in the van burning gas we will listen to more French. I just want to keep the great accent she has in her head, and she loves it. When we get home I hope to do some more lessons, read The Apple Cake again and maybe make an applecake or apple crisp.

We also have another monarch about to emerge, and we may set up the crystal growing kit if we feel like it.

I have also been helping the DSs quite a bit with their homework. DS15 is really getting slammed this year with very demanding teachers (thank goodness!) and he has been working his tail off. :-) He has had more homework so far this year than all of last year. And it's good, meaty stuff too! Earlier this week he was writing an essay about the leadership qualities of Ulysses S. Grant, and he has been reading The Odyssey too.

DS13 isn't having any trouble with his work at all but most of his homework is stupid busywork, and I'm trying to help him with some strategies to get something out of them and get them done faster.

Lynn, it's great to have some company here!

See you later,
-Jo

What is Blokus?