Monday, September 8, 2008

Homeschool

Mondays are going to be my day at home school. The day will look something like this:

First, I will be doing some preschool activities with Mary Autumn, Aliou, Leon and Athan. For one thing, we'll be doing fun things with letters and phonics. In the picture below, Leon is drawing an L in the sand. Today we read books about letters and practiced writing a couple of letters on handheld paddles before working in the sand.

Next, I work with the older girls, Anna Mae and Gianna, on their Little Red Schoolhouse homework. In the picture, they are hard at work in the school room. One thing that is quite clear about home school is that the kids accomplish a lot in very little time because they are able to get VERY focused. The girls did map skills and spelling work with great concentration.

Focused work was also apparent when I next headed to the Harrelson's where we are working on a Language Arts program that combines reading, writing, and grammar with some history lessons. Cody, Taylor, and Kyle breezed through the preparatory set about words like revolution, declaration, and independence, and then got right to work reading and locating main points in a short article. Their skills were top of the line and it's only the 2nd week back in school.

It sure is a pleasure to witness the kids' minds at work processing and digesting and learning all kinds of new things from latitude to colonists to nouns to the multiple meanings of the word revolution. And I enjoy the laughs too, like when Leon connected the "d" sound we were working on with deer and then his little mind leaped sideways to say, "Deer is female!" as he remembered the song "Doe a deer, a female deer. . ."

I'd say Mondays are going to be lots of fun.




2 comments:

jenny said...

thank you for your faithfulness to help us. we appreciate you!

Jennie Lou said...

A common argument for homeschooling is "No one cares about your children the way you do." Add to that a caring grandmother and my children are doubly blessed!