One of the many things I am enjoying about homeschooling is the flexibility of both scheduling and curriculum content. I'm always supplementing with something, and I find that the internet truly is a wonderful resource. A History lesson about the 7 continents and their well-known landmarks, geography, and climate are much more interesting with the aid of YouTube videos. When I was in school, we basically had one or two pictures in a textbook (sometimes) and our imaginations. Videos about the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), the Great Wall of China (Asia), castles (Europe), The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and Mt. Rushmore (North America, obviously), penguins (Antarctica), rainforests and macaws (South America), and giraffes (Africa) kept both of the kids engaged and interested. Better yet? They were talking about it for the rest of the day. Good stuff.
For art class, while discussing how Joan Miro lived in Barcelona, Spain and went to study art in Paris, France, we used Google Maps (including street view) to find out what both places look like and how far away from home he went to study (roughly 11 hours by today's travel, in case you were wondering). Reezle decided she would like to visit Barcelona and Paris, especially after we visited the Eiffel Tower via Google's street view. And today, we looked at various images of the earth while we studied the earth's poles and the equator.
With week four of homeschool underway, we're all still loving it. Little G had his assessment yesterday and, like his sister and just as we expected, he scored well above and received the same recommendations as R. Officially, he will be starting some first grade curriculum, probably later this week. He is very excited and keeps asking me to check the OLS (online school) to see if it is there yet, even though I told him it probably won't be until later in the week or possible even next week. He finished his Kindergarten Math book tonight after dinner, so it will be mostly Study Island and working through the remaining Kindergarten lessons in the OLS to keep him busy while we wait for the new curriculum to update on the site.
Reezle will also be starting curriculum for the next grade level because she is assessing out of Math and Language Arts; I'm just waiting to hear back from our second grade teacher on when. I'm just happy that both of them are so interested in learning. Or, um, all three of them if you count the cat; she hasn't missed a lesson yet.
Fall is definitely in the air, with cool nights that bring thoughts of changing leaves, Halloween, squash soup and cups of cocoa to mind. This is my favorite season, the only downside of which is the fact that my least favorite season follows. For now, we enjoy. I hope to make some homemade applesauce with the kids, and we will be making apple shirts soon, which I can hardly wait to post about!
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