Wednesday's Homeschooling

Today we had a treasure hunt. Aaron loves Three Musketeers candy bars, so I hid one. Then I wrote five clue cards. He had to read each one to find the next clue, and eventually found the location of the hidden candy bar. There were some words that were hard for him and he had to decode them. This activity was worth doing again. It was challenging, but he was highly motivated to find the food.

We also played a game with Dolch word lists. I printed out two copies of two of the grade level lists. Then I cut the words out, so there was one word on each slip of paper. (This made two copies of each word.) We took turns drawing words out of a pile and reading the word out loud when we drew it, then placing it face up on the table. When there was a match, we would write the word on our list. We could match words from either our own piles or each others'. The person who was the first to have ten matched words written down won. (He won.) Aaron liked this game so we will play again. The site where I got the Dolch word lists also has a page about games to play, but this was one we made up as we went along with it.

Aaron also spent time working on his timeline binder. We're still getting it set up with clear pocket dividers, with a bright colored paper in each. Each side of each page will represent fifty years in the history of the world and it will be up to him to decorate each page with that half-century's events.

Next.. we read from the extreme mountain biking book. He just loves this book. We're already reading the last chapter and it is about competitions. We also read a vocabulary list of slang used by mountain bikers. I let him try to guess what each term referred to - and a few he got, like "brain bucket" means helmet, and "steed" refers to a mountain bike. I will make a multiple choice test for him after we finish the book - not that I want to test him, but more because I think it will help him remember all the vocabulary we learned.

Also tonight I read to him from "Home Schools, An Alternative" by Cheryl Gorder. I want him to know more about the homeschooling movement that he's chosen to be part of. The book uses a lot of big words, like "influential" and "controversy" - so this was a vocabulary building experience! He enjoyed the reading and interrupted me several times to discuss the issues!

After that he asked to be excused so he could clean his room and move one of our computers back there, so I let him go.

Later - we listened together as Art Bell interviewed cave explorer Bonnie Crystal... she's just awesome and has wonderful stories about her expeditions under the earth.

Tuesday's Homeschooling

That was 24 hours or more ago and I don't remember much about what we did. If I don't write things down right away, the memory fades...

  ¶ 11:49 PM