For reading we've started reading Anne of Green Gables. He trusts my judgement in choosing our novel to read and discuss for class. I encouraged him to help me select and when he didn't I went with an old classic. I have also been working on developing a guide for how to use this novel in your home school classroom. It has several questions, a writing journal question, ways to use an art journal, tie in's with history/geography classes, and vocabulary word lists.
Math we are still doing prep work for pre Alegbra and learning our % conversions, etc.
History we started from the beginning of America and have talked about the first people to come into the United States which has led us to a unit of studies on various Indian groups. I loved these studies as a child and the most ironic thing has happened while we were studying the Indians. I was also working on a family tree in my spare time at a popular genealogy website.
Through my subscription I am able to link with other members who also have genetic links on my family tree. I began studying something and discovered that one of my great grandmother's relatives had also done some research on her family line. Her mother was full blooded Cherokee.
This sort of tied in the unit of studies we have been doing and really lit my fire for not only teaching, but learning about this. We are also planning to tie this in with his scout troop and the Indian Lore badge.
I really want to share a few of my favorite websites with you for this:
Videos
Indian Sign Language
In science last year we studied a lot about biology and I wasn't really clear on what he knew about the other sciences. So I took us back to the basics here as well hoping to build from the ground up in the educational process. He groaned a little and informed he knew all about minerals and rocks, rock cycles, etc. I told him to humor me. By lesson three he discovered he may have learned something about them in school but he was not as all knowing as he had led mom to believe. He was not aware of the minerals having a formula name, what the formula name meant, or the charts and table graphs. The moral here? An old dog can always learn new tricks or ways to do those tricks!
One of my favorite science resources
I'm also in the planning stages to teach a local class on baby sitting for my son and the older children in the local home school group. We will cover early childhood development, basics of caring for a baby and small children, and so much more. I'm excited about this project and look forward to getting everything planned out in the next week or two. I just have to cross my fingers there are enough children that want to learn this type of thing.
Now that I've told you all about our first month of school, what are you studying with your children this year? Is there anything you are excited to learn more about with them?
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