Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Homeschooling on Tuesday - our second day this school year - went much better than Monday. We got a lot done, and Aaron seems more "ready" for academic learning than he has in previous years.
We started with a Bible verse - Proverbs 27:1 - that he illustrated. Rather than trying to think of a scene to match the verse, he chose to illustrate with a flower as decoration. That's fine. The point is - besides hearing the ancient proverb - to provide an activity that will encourage his artistic talents. My plan is to collect the Proverb Pictures in a book... probably a binder with the pictures in plastic pockets (what do they call those things?)... Anyhow, he did this with felt pens and oil pastels (his favorite medium these days).
I thought putting the Bible verse first would be good - and as it turned out having art first also helped. We moved from the right-brain activity to a left-brain activity: writing. Starting easy, I had him write his full name and birthdate three times. He doesn't like to write but this is the year he will have to get good at it - starting with a simple assignment each day. I have this all planned out. He complained and started slow, finishing in a flash after protesting, "You're just doing this to torture me!" LOL - well it takes pain to be beautiful, I've heard... and I need to see some beautiful writing from him. To his credit, he does have nice handwriting considering he doesn't display it very often.
Next we played another math-related game. He chose Mille-Bornes, the French car-race card game. This was his first time ever to play it, and he caught on right away! I was so happy to see that he understood the complicated rules so easily. He didn't do his own mile-addition, but we can work into that later. I just want to have some math activities available that he won't consider too terrible. We're going to move right into using that math book by the end of the week. Meanwhile I want to get the message across that using math can be fun.
We also learned something about ancient Rome. During the first quarter we're having a unit study on ancient cultures, with an emphasis on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. We've done studies on Egypt and Greece before, but never did Rome until now. Today we found out what happened to the Roman farmers after the war with the Carthaginians was over.
The only thing I had planned and didn't get to was The Phonics Game. That can be a priority for tomorrow.
We started with a Bible verse - Proverbs 27:1 - that he illustrated. Rather than trying to think of a scene to match the verse, he chose to illustrate with a flower as decoration. That's fine. The point is - besides hearing the ancient proverb - to provide an activity that will encourage his artistic talents. My plan is to collect the Proverb Pictures in a book... probably a binder with the pictures in plastic pockets (what do they call those things?)... Anyhow, he did this with felt pens and oil pastels (his favorite medium these days).I thought putting the Bible verse first would be good - and as it turned out having art first also helped. We moved from the right-brain activity to a left-brain activity: writing. Starting easy, I had him write his full name and birthdate three times. He doesn't like to write but this is the year he will have to get good at it - starting with a simple assignment each day. I have this all planned out. He complained and started slow, finishing in a flash after protesting, "You're just doing this to torture me!" LOL - well it takes pain to be beautiful, I've heard... and I need to see some beautiful writing from him. To his credit, he does have nice handwriting considering he doesn't display it very often.
Next we played another math-related game. He chose Mille-Bornes, the French car-race card game. This was his first time ever to play it, and he caught on right away! I was so happy to see that he understood the complicated rules so easily. He didn't do his own mile-addition, but we can work into that later. I just want to have some math activities available that he won't consider too terrible. We're going to move right into using that math book by the end of the week. Meanwhile I want to get the message across that using math can be fun.
We also learned something about ancient Rome. During the first quarter we're having a unit study on ancient cultures, with an emphasis on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. We've done studies on Egypt and Greece before, but never did Rome until now. Today we found out what happened to the Roman farmers after the war with the Carthaginians was over.
The only thing I had planned and didn't get to was The Phonics Game. That can be a priority for tomorrow.
