Back to Homeschooling
I actually found myself looking forward to the end of camp, so Z and I would have more time to do things together. The last few weeks have seen us getting back into a groove, developing a casual routine of writing practice, grammar, math, and reading, punctuated by projects and outings.
Every day Aaron leaves a writing practice worksheet with a quote from Portal or a sentence about Minecraft, which Z painstakingly copies to practice his upper- and lowercase letters (and usually illustrates as well). He's supposed to do it on his own before I get up, but I always end up having to hover over him; much whining ensues. :P When I look it over later, I have him point out the parts of speech that he knows (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), and identify the rest (articles, prepositions, conjunctions).
Then we go upstairs and break out the math workbook. Over the summer I picked up Star Wars themed workbooks for 1st and 2nd grade math; as of this week we're almost finished the first grade book. Addition and subtraction, of course, but also some basic fractions (which he already knew from going out for pizza-pizza is excellent for learning fractions!). At his request, I also gave him the fundamentals of basic algebra. He likes finding the x.
For reading, we've continued our ongoing perusal of the Little House series; he loves anything Laura Ingalls Wilder, and we've actually finished the entire series, and looked on line at pictures of her and Almanzo's house, Rocky Ridge Farm. It's in Missouri, but unfortunately too far away from St. Louis to fold it into a grandparents trip.
Z is not as skittish as he used to be, but he still doesn't like stories about people breaking rules and getting into trouble; the narrative tension of the foreshadowing makes him anxious. He also doesn't like humor based on people arguing with each other. I realized what he liked about the Little House books is that they're cozy books about a happy family that loves each other. In the same vein, we've also read Little Women (the first half, that ends with Mr. March coming home from the war), and he loved that as well, especially when I told him that the author saw herself as Jo, and really did have three other sisters.
This takes about 1-2 hours, after which we play games, plunk on the piano or the new harpsichord, or do stuff on the computer. So yeah, there's still a lot of computer time, but I feel like if I get writing, reading, and math into the day I'm doing well.
Every day Aaron leaves a writing practice worksheet with a quote from Portal or a sentence about Minecraft, which Z painstakingly copies to practice his upper- and lowercase letters (and usually illustrates as well). He's supposed to do it on his own before I get up, but I always end up having to hover over him; much whining ensues. :P When I look it over later, I have him point out the parts of speech that he knows (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), and identify the rest (articles, prepositions, conjunctions).
Then we go upstairs and break out the math workbook. Over the summer I picked up Star Wars themed workbooks for 1st and 2nd grade math; as of this week we're almost finished the first grade book. Addition and subtraction, of course, but also some basic fractions (which he already knew from going out for pizza-pizza is excellent for learning fractions!). At his request, I also gave him the fundamentals of basic algebra. He likes finding the x.
For reading, we've continued our ongoing perusal of the Little House series; he loves anything Laura Ingalls Wilder, and we've actually finished the entire series, and looked on line at pictures of her and Almanzo's house, Rocky Ridge Farm. It's in Missouri, but unfortunately too far away from St. Louis to fold it into a grandparents trip.
Z is not as skittish as he used to be, but he still doesn't like stories about people breaking rules and getting into trouble; the narrative tension of the foreshadowing makes him anxious. He also doesn't like humor based on people arguing with each other. I realized what he liked about the Little House books is that they're cozy books about a happy family that loves each other. In the same vein, we've also read Little Women (the first half, that ends with Mr. March coming home from the war), and he loved that as well, especially when I told him that the author saw herself as Jo, and really did have three other sisters.
This takes about 1-2 hours, after which we play games, plunk on the piano or the new harpsichord, or do stuff on the computer. So yeah, there's still a lot of computer time, but I feel like if I get writing, reading, and math into the day I'm doing well.