The kids are taking a break from cleaning their room. My kitchen looks like a bomb blast. And it's laundry day. So, relaxing is not exactly an option. I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of stuff for myself that didn't happen during the week because of home-schooling. I honestly don't know how those mommy bloggers manage home-schooling, a business, and a thriving blog all at the same time. I'm barely keeping up.
On the good news front, the kids are doing well with their mathematics work. Billy's got the basics of fractions down pat. This up coming week I am going to give him more challenging fraction mathematics problems to see how he does with them. Doug did his first algebra problems and needed only a small amount of guidance on how to do them. I'm giving him a few more to do next week. I am also giving him a page of fraction mathematics to see where he is at with that. It's more complex than what I gave Billy but I have no problems walking Doug through how to solve problems. Worst case scenario, we bust out a calculator to solve problems.
They did really well with the social studies work I gave them. Billy's opinion 'mini-essay' on Ecuador came out well. He presented his opinion and backed it up with some interesting evidence. He has decided he want to go to Ecuador and try the food. This may have been inspired by the video we watched earlier in the week about food from Ecuador. A lot of it looked tasty. Doug's opinion 'mini-essay' on the Presidency came out hilariously well. Doug has a strong opinion on being president. He does not want the job because it is way too much homework. I emailed these 'mini-essays' (2 paragraphs that state their position and their reasoning) to their teachers which impressed the teachers.
I spent yesterday writing up lesson plans. This is because I forgot to make a lesson plan for yesterday. So, as we went through the daily routine, I was coming up with things off the top of my head for them to do. There was the usual reading and writing in the reading log. The social studies segment was watching a video about the history of trains. Their writing log prompt was about the video that I just whipped off as they were watching the video. Thank goodness we still have a pile of math worksheets. They each did one and graded their own work. They were super excited to do that. Art time was 'painting' with my crappy brush tipped markers on some canvas panels. They boys made pictures of trains. They did a great job. They're still trying to make up their own songs during music time. Science time was spent watching Bill Nye videos. We watched one on volcanoes and one on germs.
Next week's themes are going to be:
ELA - Science Fiction (Billy and I are reading H.G. Well's The Time Machine. I'm going to try to get Doug involved with it too. He may just want to keep reading Smoke Jumpers.)
Math - Worksheets, fractions, and word problems. Doug is going to be getting another page of simple algebra problems.
Social Studies - Timeline of the Industrial revolution, major inventions of the Industrial revolution, kid friendly videos on these topics, and a 'mini essay' on what invention shaped today's technology?
Science - NYS geologic history, looking at some pre-Ice age fossils I own, looking at an Ice age fossil I own, a video about the Ice age, and a video about ancient animals still alive today (i.e. sea sponges and mollusks).
Art - We're going to make some 'fossils' by baking clay in the oven with impressions in them. One paperweight sized one for each kid. There's going to be some 'free' art time as per earlier this week. I'm also going to bust out the 'invention box' for them to make some inventions.
Depending on how cruddy the weather is going to be, the kids may be doing indoor exercises with me. This will likely be like herding cats. I'm aiming to get 15 minutes of exercise in every day. I haven't been doing that because I've been distracted by the kids. So, I'm going to incorporate it into our schedule. I don't know where I'm going to squeeze it into the schedule. But, if I a lucky, today the living room will get cleaned up and I'll have room to roll out my yoga mat.
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