Here’s today Homeschool Daily Report, offered to the Interwebs as a witness to what one homeschooling day is like for one student in one corner of the universe. Take or leave.
- Late start. He was up late reading and drawing.
- Prayer: Mass readings. Before that, a quick review of the sections of the OT (had him tell me what they are) and recitation of the books of the OT through 2 Chronicles. Then talking about what the Wisdom books are (1st reading is from Wisdome today).
- He read it aloud, then I mentioned how the dynamic described in the reading (go take a look) is quite real, even today.
- Gospel. I read this one. Quick review of geography (Galilee/Judea/Jerusalem).
- Morning Prayers.
- Rehashed the liturgical calendar for the next two weeks – 5th Sunday of Lent coming this weekend, then Palm Sunday, etc. Implicit, unstated relief on both our parts that the end is near and Lenten penances, while SO HELPFUL in developing spiritual discipline….are almost done, too.
- No copywork, no illustration of past copywork either. It was late, and he’s been doing a lot of drawing this week.
- Math: starter/revew problems from EnVision (they call it “Daily Spiral Review), then we went over section 7.5 of the 6th grade text, which was about adding mixed numbers. He did two practice pages, plus an enrichment page. Easy.
- I mentioned that Monday was Pi Day plus Einstein’s birthday, and that we would go to the science museum on Monday to see what was up with that. He mused about how if Einstein was alive he would be very gratified to know that even though people had not believed him at the time, what he said about black holes has been shown to be true. We then talked about what scientific thinking takes: rigor and understanding of principles, self-confidence (he said) and imagination (I said.)
- Then he asked, “What kind of shoe is a Tony Lama?” A boot, I replied. Pull up images on internet. Why? “Because it’s in Bloom County.” Extensive narration of the context followed.
- Then, you know what? Videos. Several. Haven’t watched videos since last week. Time to catch up.
- Started with Hip Hughes History on the War of 1812.
- Then Brain Scoop about species identification – giving me a chance to reiterate, once again, that scientific knowledge is by no means carved in stone and is always, er, evolving.
- An ostrich racing bicyclists from Laughing Squid.
- Several from the Kids Should See This.
- KQED has good science videos, too: we started with this one about a mouse that is resistant to a particularly virulant scorpion venom (he knew the kind of scorpion – bark – just by looking at it, before they identified it onscreen), this one on flesh-eating beetles (actually used in this research collection to help), and this one on squid skin. All quite interesting.
- Then let’s watch the ostriches again. And the baby sloths making cute sounds.
- Last, I pulled out The Red Pony by Steinbeck, which will be the next “school” read. (This study guide, among others, will be useful) I introduced Steinbeck, we looked at a map of that area of California, found Salinas and Monterey and talked about the places in the area to
which we have traveled – Monterey, down to Big Sur, Santa Cruz, up in Silicon Valley (his sister had an internship in San Mateo three summers ago, and we visited), San Francisco, etc.
- I told him it was a coming-of-age story and asked what he think those type of stories have in common thematically.
- We then read the first couple of pages together. I highlighted the initial, opening description of Billy, isolating each physical aspect and asking what it communicates about Billy. Then I pulled the sentence, “The triangle picked him up out of sleep.” and asked how that was different from just saying, “The triangle woke him up.” What does that tiny difference communicate about that moment that a less vivid sentence does not?
- He’ll read the first chapter for Monday.
- All this time, we were sitting in the living room in front of the patio door, where we watched, first a couple of mourning doves just hanging out, which struck us as strange until we understood they were probably prepping to mate – there was a lot of strutting and preening happening – and then another, unfamiliar bird appeared, which we looked up and found to be a Northern Flicker. And then a cat strolled by, scattering them all.
- Timeframe: 10:15-1. Followed by lunch, piano practice then off to pick up another kid at his school and head to a birthday party at a trampoline place way the heck on the other side of town. #Friday
which we have traveled – Monterey, down to Big Sur, Santa Cruz, up in Silicon Valley (his sister had an internship in San Mateo three summers ago, and we visited), San Francisco, etc.
Charlotte was Both 