Curriculum “after the fact”
What Nino read the past couple of months or so. He’ll be 7 in December, so I guess this is around first grade?
Right now our 13-year-old does a combo of unschooling/homeschooling/co-op schooling, so whenever I’m “on duty” at the co-op, I take the little one with me and that’s our more formal schooling day of the week. So “real” schooling takes place about once a week. The rest of the week, he just reads and does whatever he wants to do throughout the day. It’s mostly books, as evidenced by the long list — and I keep track by listing what he’s read every month or so, just to kinda make sure that all subjects are “covered” in some way. Mainly what he does is take stuff out of the bookshelves, and at the end of the day we pile them up around the bookshelves, until I can’t stand it anymore and have to put them all back on the shelves. THAT’S when I make these posts and document what he’s read.
I do have a box of the “curriculum” I designed for him before the beginning of the year. That’s where I get the books/materials that we use on our official school day each week.
Besides books, he plays outside, and alternates painting, drawing, sketching, play dough, Lego, math manipulatives, board games, and just talking talking talking about the thousand different things that he wonders about on a daily basis, etc. He gets one show a day, usually an educational one, though he’s allowed one 30-minute game a week (usually on my phone or Lego Batman on the XBox), and one non-educational show, like today, when he watched Lego Chima. There are evenings he gets to watch Studio C with older siblings and Dad — with monitoring/censoring done by the older viewers. I’m not too fond of him being exposed to more adult humor, but I figure with siblings and Dad around the bonding is more important than zero exposure to secular culture.
Yesterday, he wanted to learn sewing since I was hemming the hubby’s pants.
Last night he said he wanted to learn cursive, so I need to make up some practice sheets for him for tomorrow.
Today he decided to make fingerprints using paper, graphite pencils, and scotch tape. He’s been fingerprinting all of us.
And since he’s read a variety of biographies and historical events, time to make a Book of Centuries.
Learning happens. 🙂
Religion/Character Education
Little Acts of Grace
Saint Francis by Brian Wildsmith
Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Margaret Mayo
– four prayers memorized so far
– also enjoying Magnifikid subscription
English
Mad Libs (he’s learning pronouns and nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjectives!!)
Literature
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton
The Enchanted Castle
Redwall
parts of Taggerung
Spider subscription (joined the drawing contest for “really cool school bus”)
Math
After working for several days on the first half (2/3?) of Singapore Math 1 last year sometime, he took 3-4 more days to finish the rest of the book, a couple of weeks ago. So now he’s ready for the next book. This is the type of relaxed Math I love!!
asked me about square root last month so I showed him using tiles
verbal math happening almost every single day with questions on dates, equivalences, money, time, weight, height, etc.
still reads Big Sis’ Life of Fred books when she leaves it lying around.
Science
DK Eyewitness Hurricane and Tornado
DK Eyewitness Space (3 Books in 1 + Workbook + Poster) – he LOVES the workbook and just started doing them one evening and wouldn’t stop!
DK Readers Space Station
The Rain Forest by Gallimard Jeunesse and Rene Mettler
Best Ever Paper Planes that really fly
DK Eyewitness Readers Extreme Machines
The Camera by Gallimard Jeunesse et al.
(eclipse watching)
(informal experiments: paper mache, airplane making)
History
Molly Pitcher, Young Patriot
Lou Gehrig
Buffalo Bill
The Story of the Spirit of St. Louis
Wilbur and Orville Wright
The Story of the Mayflower Compact
George Washington (Heroes of America)
The Story of Valley Forge
The Story of the Statue of Liberty
Snowflake Bentley
Davy Crockett
Abigail Adams
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
Revolution News by Christopher Maynard
Albert Einstein: A Life of Genius
The Story of the USS Arizona
Fun with Hieroglyphs
Civics
The Story of Presidential Elections
Music
George Gershwin by Mike Venezia
Art
Pablo Picasso: Breaking All the Rules
I Spy: Mystery
Logic
Chess for Kids by Michael Basman
Chess for Children
Field Trips since September:
– Dayton Art Institute
– Cincinnati Museum Center
– Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum
– iSpace
– The Atheneaum, for Vespers
– Fossil hunting with Dad last month
also learning to bike
Trail Life weekly activities continue
lots of exploring using scissors, paper, glue
still writes mostly in ALL CAPS
listening to Redwall audiobooks
trying to write in Gallifreyan
learned AMPERSAND yesterday and thinks it’s so cool — and asked me if & could be used in place of “AND” and “END” in spelling words
loves playing with soap in the bath
loves playing basketball and soccer with dad
doesn’t know if he wants birthday party in December or not
wants a new Sonic Screwdriver
Need to get focused on piano lessons.
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