Homeschool Mother's Journal - 6

In my life this week...

It's been a very unusual week.  A friend and former music teacher of mine passed away last weekend.  I was honored to take part in the services to celebrate her life by directing her own choir!  To make it even more complicated, her son-in-law is a partner with my husband and so my husband was much busier this week at work, too, and is now exhausted.  I am thankful that he doesn't have to work this weekend and can get some rest.  I wrote more about this in the previous post on my blog.

In our homeschool this week...

Well, our schedule was all messed up this week with a field trip all day on Tuesday and the funeral on Thursday morning, but both were valuable learning experiences for the children.  So, we haven't gotten everything on the list checked off this week, but I did get caught up in our Bible and history readings and notebook pages.  This week we studied more about the end of King Saul's life, how David finally became Israel's king, the Phonecians, and the Phonecian alphabet. We also did a science experiment where we "made fossils". Here is what we did:

We covered the bottom of a pie pan with non-drying clay and then pressed objects into it.

We took the objects out of the clay and mixed plaster of paris in another pie pan.

We poured the plaster over the clay impressions.

We smoothed the plaster out and let it dry.

We bent the edges of the pie pan and the plaster peeled off of the clay really well. Now we have "fossils"!

B began reading a Geronimo Stilton book this week, called Geronimo's Valentine.  She loves it and keeps asking to read more after her reading time in our schedule is over!  She was getting bored with chapter books that don't have any illustrations or color.  The Geronimo Stilton books are funny stories with some colorful, humorous illustrations and she is enjoying this book! 

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

Another homeschooling mom called me on Monday to see if we wanted to join them on a spontaneous field trip on Tuesday - and we did!  We haven't seen this family for a couple of months and we always have a great time with them.  Our week was already crazy, so we threw the lesson plans to the wind for a day and investigated lots of fun science activities at Wonderlab Museum of Health, Science, & Technology, in Bloomington, Indiana.  Thursday afternoon we went to the Open Gym time at a local church for our homeschool group and had a fun visit with two other families. All four of us also went to the Boat and RV Show in Indy on Friday and enjoyed looking around. We are getting excited for another boating season!

T & J making models that move!

B in the Jack and the Beanstalk climbing area

J & T experiment at the magnetic sculpture table

B & S experiment in the bubble room

My favorite thing this week was...
Somehow we got to go do something "fun" and educational almost every day this week!  Nearing the end of a long, cold winter it is really nice to just get "out and about"!  I enjoyed time with other adults and I enjoyed watching both of my children interact with younger kids that they did not even know and help them with an activity! I love it that my children are used to interaction with people of all ages and don't think that they are "too cool" to make a new friend that is much younger than their peers.

What's working/not working for us...

I wrote about my son's discouragement in math last week... on Monday we had tears. We did not do math on Tuesday because of a field trip.  So I used another strategy on Wednesday. I didn't even have him open his math book, but I took a peek at it and wrote two of the equations from his new lesson on the white board and we worked through them together - no tears! Then I just had him review math facts.  This white board approach has worked in the past, so I think we will just do a small number of them each day, with some review and eventually I will have him do the writing on the board before I have him do it in the workbook.  I think placing each step in a different color helps him to see what he is doing, too.  On our field trip, I was  able to talk to my friend who uses the same curriculum.  It was reassuring to know that another family found this particular concept something that took their student more time, as well! 

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...

I am re-asking this question from last week.  Do any of you have children who have diagnosed learning disabilities and have you ever thought about re-testing them to see if they have made progress in the academic areas?  That is the only formal testing that my son has done and homeschooled children are not allowed to take our regular state standardized tests.  It has been two years and I would like to get a more measured look at his growth and what "holes" we still need to work on.  Although it may not be necessary, would it be helpful to have the same type of assessment or should I just choose another standarized educational assessment?  He was previously tested  with the WISC-IV, WIAT-2, and Beery.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

We all had a fun time at Wonderlab!