Monday, September 5, 2016

The First Week of School at Home


Adding some wet on wet watercolors to our main lesson books.  St Francis, Leif the Lucky and a Compass Rose.  Sean loves to join in on the painting.
  Although I was very excited for our first week, I really was worried about how it would go.  I think it went much better than anticipated and we learned quite a bit about a lot of different things.  One of my biggest lessons was how important timing is for the reception of certain assignments.  Both of my boys balk a bit about writing assignments, so I've been trying very hard to observe what times of day they are better received and fit them into the (loose) schedule accordingly.

  This week our loose schedule has been to start with Circle Time around 8:30 and then move into Waldorf Essentials main lessons/independent fifty states work followed by recess around 10:30.  After an invigorating walk or bike ride we settle down for read aloud time from our American History and Spanish picture books and a little artwork before lunch.  After lunch we indulge in a little free play time before finishing up with piano practive and Brave Writer literature work/reading.

I'll share some of the highlights of our week in pictures:

Discovery Place science museum field trip on Tuesday.  Sean's expression on the bed of nails cracks me up!
More Discovery Place field trip photos.  Exploring simple machines, rainforest exhibit (only interested in the rope bridge climbing), and life cycles of a frog.
Multiplication flowers and writing work
Making pinecone bird feeders to go with our St. Francis unit study
Jack & Sean working together to make muffins
The boys were pretty excited that recess was not "rained out"