Thursday's Homeschooling

Today was another very productive day for Aaron and I in homeschool. For Ancient Wisdom we took a break from Proverbs and instead read something that has been circling the Internet claiming to be a Cherokee story...

An old Cherokee is telling his grandson about a fight that is going on inside himself. He said it is between 2 wolves.

One is evil: Anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego....

The other is good: Joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith...

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one I feed."

Aaron drew a dreamcatcher at the bottom and we had a nice talk about the history of the dreamcatcher phenomena. I thought this story worked in well with the Proverbs we've been reading (chapter 27).

Next was his writing time. We talked about the purpose of having a daily writing exercise at this point in his homeschooling. He's never wanted to read or write so he's needing practice, mainly just to get more used to holding the pencil and forming letters at this time. Once he's more comfortable with the way writing feels, and a little better at reading, we'll do more creative writing. Today all he wanted to write was his name and I said that was okay so long as he filled the whole paper. He sailed right through that and was done in ten minutes.

Next we played our new math game... it is a dice/cards game called "Fill or Bust!"... and has ongoing scorekeeping for good addition practice. I remember playing this game years ago at my sister-in-law's house but since then it has been commercialized and the cards added to the original dice game.

Next... we had a break for him to watch his TV show... then studied the USA map. My plan is to help him learn to recognize all the states and to know the capitals. We are starting with the first 13 states - and today we concentrated on learning mid-Atlantic states and reading about New York in our World Book Encyclopedia.

Thursday Evening

Tonight Aaron did 100 sit-ups on the exercise mat he found at the campground across the river. He just loves that mat. Campers use them to sleep on... he uses the one he found for exercise.

Also we started reading a new book for literature: ...And Now Miguel - a Newbery Honor Book from 1953. Cimeron brought it home from school where she's reading it with her 8th grade class. We just love reading the Newberys... so I asked her to share and she agreed. The story takes place in New Mexico and since we studied New York today, and the encyclopedia is still here on our homeschool table, I opened it to New Mexico and showed Aaron the pictures and map.

  ¶ 8:11 PM