Day 17

Today was a bit of a different day. Sean had his MRI scheduled, so he only did Greek and Vocabulary, since I had to take Aidan to the local school for his first speech therapy session.

Kieron got a late start since I was gone, but he accomplished quite a bit.

• Labelling a continent map. (there are lots of these online -- I just made little labels so he could attach them -- later he can label and color his own map).
• Greek
• Math (rounding off, and we played a place value game which was fun for him and the little kids could play too).
• A quiz for the first chapter of Our Life in Christ (I found the quizzes here) -- the ones he didn't know, he looked up in the book. This led to an extended discussion about the Fifth Commandment, abortion, Dumbledore and Snape, etc.
• He finished reading Amazing Snakes (and has been narrating to me all throughout the day) and finished Once Upon a Time Saints.
• He drew a picture of a snake in his field notebook.
• His Young Scientists' Club #7 arrived so he looked through that.... It's on Minerals.
• He is playing now with his dad's old Erector set from childhood.
• He also babysat Paddy while I was at speech with Aidan (for a dollar : )).

I assigned him Midsummer Night's Dream to read from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. We will see how this goes. I have Shakespeare and the Globe by Aliki and there are Shakespeare unit studies at Core Knowledge, and some other library resources. We want to work on it slowly and integrate it with the Geography unit if we can.

I made little assignment books for Sean and Kieron. Many days we don't seem to need these -- but some days I wish I had some place to write down a checklist, and so the books are for those times. I also made a new weekly lesson plan format, but I can't upload them from this computer. Here's Kieron's Henle Help sheet though -- I am planning to add to it as the year goes on.

Later today I hope to take the younger set for a Nature Walk... the weather is beautiful out there ...cool and sunny .... and we haven't been on a walk or to the beach for over a week because there was an armed fugitive loose up here. I don't know if he has been captured yet, but we can't stay indoors forever.....

I have been thinking about immersion studies.... because of what Rosie said here and what real learning folks said here. It fits in with things that have been on my mind recently.... mainly, that I notice if I plan in detail for one broad "Main Lesson" type unit, it seems to end up growing anyway to encompass the whole universe. So why plan several subjects and end up with way too much to connect all together? not that I do this anyway, but I usually feel the temptation.

Clare has been listening to Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense and has borrowed the Father Brown series from the library .... so the family is watching those in the evenings.

Aidan and Paddy played with their Math books and played with the HWT letterforms..... Aidan had cranio sacral therapy yesterday for OT and speech today went pretty well -- getting used to a new speech therapist, but she seems to be in tune with how we do things.

I gave Paddy a new spiral notebook, and drew some more pictures with him.