Week Three Recap

I had enough "demo-skipping" when I was in school.

We are using AmblesideOnline curriculum, Years 4 and 6.

Dad brought home a super-fancy little scale home from work that would measure in grams so that Peanut could do one of her science demonstrations. The demonstration did not work out as planned, I think maybe the scale was too sensitive. She actually has had a few demonstrations this year. We try to always do anything mentioned in our book. I had enough "demonstration skipping" when I was in school. I am sure we did less than 10 hands-on projects in science, and that counts watching something the teacher did, at least up until high school.

We got an audiobook of Robinson Crusoe. It is better that way, I don't have to stumble over words, etc.

We did some nature study at the local park. Each kid picked a tree. We took samples of the leaves home for identification, then by the time we all got time to look ours up, the samples had deteriorated quite a bit. Ooops. Guess we'll repeat next week. We did see a ground squirrel sticking his head up out of his little hole, so that was fun. I am not a fan of ground squirrels and moles, but this one was at the park, so I can live with that.

This is not the one we saw, it's just a picture off the ol' Internets. We couldn't get to our camera quickly.

First two weeks of school

The first two weeks are behind us! It happened so quickly, I didn't even get a chance to post the first week recap. Here are some highlights and things I learned:


1. Robinson Crusoe is going to be a hard read. Not that it is not a good book. It is so interesting, and we are going to like it. But it is just hard to read. I am reading aloud, because that is what Ambleside recommends with this book. It is difficult reading. The spelling, grammar, and capitalizations are crazy. At least, not what we are used to in this century, and you are supposed to use the unabridged version. However, I wish I had searched longer for a more corrected copy. I find myself stopping and stumbling over the words. I've already printed out this copy, so it will have to do, and maybe it will end up being good for me.

2. I am already tweaking the schedule to allow for shorter readings on almost all of our books. I felt like I had split things up adequately, but it helps morale around here if the reading from one book is less than four pages. That seems to be the magic number, no matter the size of the book and type. So I'm happy to oblige. They get a few more assignments per day, but no one has complained about that.

3. Junior is reading from It Couldn't Just Happen. He has specifically requested that this book be assigned every day, no matter what. Wow! So that is a good endorsement for that book, from the boy who wants to cut every extraneous second from the schoolday.

4. Peanut is reading The Hobbit. She didn't want to like it, it is a long book and she is not a fast reader yet. However, she really loves it now. I wish I had been "forced" to read it as a child! :)

5. We had a zoo picnic with our homeschool group. This is a fun way to see our friends, but not the greatest way to see the zoo. We did not see a great deal, but we had a great time, and there were a lot of animals out early in the day because of the cool morning weather.

6. Our other Outdoor Hour was spent visiting our local nature park. Much of the water has dried up, but little Bubby was still able to feed some catfish and carp, so he was very happy about this. We met friends for this excursion too, but it was a smaller crowd. :) We did a color scavenger hunt, looking for various colors in nature.