We started out strong!
Read about New York City in Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels
Read some Greek myths, Celtic fairy tales, and a bit about ancient Greek history
Read about the invention of the printing press with this lovely book (this tied in with our Wright Brothers book)...
The Boy aced his quiz #2 in Teaching Textbooks. The Girl happily returned to Math Mammoth for a review of place value. The Boy worked on spelling, alliteration, and journaling, while The Girl flew through a number of pages in Explode the Code. We read through chapter one of Grammar-Land, and did an exercise in listing nouns.
But, I have been feeling vaguely dissatisfied with science and history. I feel like we're just not doing enough with either. So I've decided that we really need to step it up a notch, and I have come up with two options for each that I need to consider over the weekend, so that we can start up fresh next week!
AND HERE IS WHAT WE DECIDED
HISTORY
Option 1...Use The History of US as a basic, daily reading (i.e. "spine")
Then, follow the rabbit trails AS DESIRED with:
Some good historical fictionTopical books from the library
Movies, documentaries, etc.
Hands-on activities from a variety of books, & from Time Travelers
Continue with books from Landmark and similar series, following the kids' interests
Add in short (picture) topical books on interrelated subjects (examples for Wright Brothers include kites, the printing press, bicycles, and more)Add in notebooking/lapboooking, related projects, and more!
Read once a week from a history spine, so that the kids will have more topics to explore!
Then, Science
Option 1...
Use Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding as a base/spine
Add in topical books, readings from the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia, and videos from Bill Nye, etc.
Plenty of hands-on, and some notebooking with printable pages from Noeo
Keep going with topical books, like The World in a Drop of Water, following the kids' interests
Add in scientist biographies, topical books on interrelated subjects, and plenty of hands-onDocumentaries and science shows (Bill Nye again!)
Lab reports/notebooking (see Noeo link above)
This gives me a lot to think about, and discuss with M, over the weekend. Hopefully, by next week, I'll have some resolution one way or the other!
If you made it this far, I hope your week went well! Have a good weekend!
Ours was a rough week, but it has given me much to think about. I'm rethinking all our read alouds (I think there are too many though the boys say they like them all), our science (I like living books, occasional activities that come from rabbit trails, and nature study), and how I want to keep our work (thinking of using composition books for each subject that contain a mix of narration and copywork, plus illustrations and such). I'm glad we have a scheduled week of this next week as I need time to think and plan, again. LOL
ReplyDeleteI reconsidered lapbooking and notebooking a couple of weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin and I went up into the attic and I pulled out the lapbooks he made on Medieval Times -- the Life of a Knight and People of a Castle. He briefly paged through them, pulled out some of the little foldables and other 3D goodies but he didn't seem the least bit interested in making a new one.
I kind of 'get' it. They're very preconceived. So...I've crossed it off my idea list. Maybe I'll be re-inspired when I see what Cyrus is doing! :)
I love the reading, research and notebooking method more and more. I love the Westvon Publishing ones especially!
ReplyDelete