How We Homeschool - October 19 - 25

BOOKS BEING LOVED

11yo read: The Outsiders (for tween boy book club), The Fort, and into The Titanic. All three books were selected by me, so I'm thrilled he took to all of them. 

8yo reading: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Thank the universe for this series - my daughter's love of reading is now in full force. I am also reading to her, Anne of Green Gables at night. She also listened to a Playaway, Thickety, The Path Begins. 

6yo: working on reading

MONDAY

9:00 - 10:30 8yo has private art lesson with M. This morning is a still life.

9:30 – 3:00 Homeschool in the Forest for 6yo + 11yo

6yo's group report: "Our theme from the day is the trees, as well as fall harvest, and seasonal change. In opening game, children had to use their knowledge of the local trees to find a safe "base" from instructors who were bobcats chasing them. We set-off in our smaller clan toward Bon Tempe Lake, where we harvested madrone berries along our path and played Monkey Fist, a great game for building awareness, agility, and fun! Kids who were less interested in the game explored the great climbing trees and helped pick the berries from their stems for making necklaces and bracelets later. We followed Dane's call and found him hiding in a tree at a perfect spot to do a blindfolded sensory activity called "meet a tree" in which the children got to use all of their senses besides their eyes to get to know one tree well and then guess which one their partner had led them too. / We found a nice lunch spot and heard the story of the douglas fir tree offering shelter to a mother mouse and her children, and then had a wonderful experience watching a great egret, from just a few feet away from us, hunting in the grass. It was so fascinating to watch it's slow, silent stalking and it's body movements as it would approach and then strike at dragon flies, termites, and other small creatures! / We hiked back to the picnic area to make our madrone berry necklaces, play a round of cat and rat, and share in our closing circle about our day."

11yo's Group Report: "Greetings, Despite my intentions to get us all up to the top of Mount Tam last week for a view of Marin and all the places we've been...a request to "go to the moon" in our "magical school bus" had me stop at Rock Springs to check out the serpentine outcropping.  On the way up (in the car and by foot), we remembered back to the watershed exploration from last week (when Caden poured water on Mt. Tam 3D map).  We had snack up there, sharing mysteries of the serpentine soils (at lack of plants).  As someone was climbing on a stone, there was a rattlesnake noticed slithering under a big rock, which had us all gather to catch a glimpse and talk about rattlesnake safety.  We continued to explore the vista of some of our recent adventures in southern Marin - from Hawk Hill to Tennessee Valley ridge and Muir Beach. / From there we took a vote - go up to the top or into the forest.  There was more interest in exploring the forest and "potential creek," we we walked through the meadow and into the woods.  Amazingly, rock springs was in fact still springing, and water was flowing in the creek.  Our two groups meandered, checking out the water and the forest - from otter cameras to acorns.  Being in a moist forest of the riparian zone during dry times was quite nice - being yet another warm day.  Our morning circle included sharing a plant community we either love most or are curious about - oak savannah, mixed evergreen, redwood forest, chaparral, coastal strand/dunes, and riparian.  To refresh what those are, I correlated all of our previous adventures to a community to support building language and context for both animal and plants in each ecosystem, which we will continue to explore all year.  Thankfully, with the "magical school bus" we can explore the variety of Marin's ecosystems. / My group snuck ahead, focusing on exploring acorns and oak trees until we got to Laurel Dell picnic area, where we ate lunch and played a game of "herp tag" where a herpetologist (one who studies reptiles & amphibians).  Our walk back wasn't quite as leisurely as we tried to catch up to and sneak up on the younger group - who also spent a chunk of time exploring the creek, the acorns, the animals.  They had planned on hiding from us for a surprise, but timing had us both arriving at the van at the same time...although they did have time to play an acorn-guessing game with Paul, tuning into to their intuition. / See you all tomorrow for another adventure."

10:30 - 2:30 8yo and I are home. Together we work on some of her math homework, and four pages of Explode the Code. We do a little review of her Classical Conversations timeline memory work. From that, we dig down a little deeper and watch of Engineering and Empire, which covers The Greek Empire, and the reign of Alexander the Great.

Greek history, snuggles and The History Channel. That was us this afternoon!

At 3pm we pick up the boys.

3:30 - 4:30 8yo has dance class while boys work on finishing their math work for the week. 

 

TUESDAY

9:00 - 11:30 Math tutor meets with each kid individually, meanwhile I work with them on language arts- Explode the Code and wrapping-up the final entries into their UK journals.

I was SERIOUSLY surprised and happy to see the 11yo's proper use and spelling of *macabre*! :-)

1:30 - 3:00  Little kids do drop-in art class

2:00 - 3:00 Music lesson for 11yo. He's loving the drums! 

3:15 - 4:15 Soccer for 6yo

4:00 - 6:00 11yo and I go mountain biking!

 

WEDNESDAY

Our weekly Wednesday block of classes (Art Appreciation, Math Club, and Maker Science) had a week off between sessions. So we grabbed a good buddy and headed back to The Rosie The Riveter Museum and picked-up where we left off over the summer. We caught one of their two feature films, listened to a ranger talk, and walked around before getting lunch at Assemble. Then it was off to the East Bay Vivarium so the big kids could do a little terrarium research, specific to the next reptile purchase. It was feeding time for the snakes when we got there, so there was some research in that department too. ;-)

3:00 - 4:00 Kids all start series of classes: gymnastics, Xfit and Parkour

 

THURSDAY

9:00 - 12:00 I wake-up not feeling well and opt out of taking younger kids to our Classical Conversations meeting. Instead we work from home on our memory work of history, geography, etc. 

9:30 - 3:00 11you is out in nature with his boys group.

2:00 - 3:00 Woodworking class for 6yo

 

FRIDAY

Wake up in the morning and all three kids do some math and language arts or writing project. Later in the morning, we host our first tween boy book club! Just us and two good friends with their moms. All six of us read The Outsiders - all six of us loved it. We had a potluck, enjoyed lunch, drank coke from the bottle (just like in the book), and discussed this coming-of-age classic. One of the moms came with gifts of switchblade combs for the boys - so cute!