This was officially the first week back to school for us. Meaning we are getting back into the full-time school routine. It's also the first week back for our charter which means I have to actually do attendance and lesson plans for reporting to the charter. So, we did our best despite the challenges outside of our home (fires and smoke all around us). Tuesday morning went really well, and then the fires/smoke started getting really bad. Wednesday it was so hard to concentrate with a red sky outside. Thursday we just needed to get some more stuff done so we did as much as possible. By Friday it was just too hard to think clearly about school, so we didn't get a lot done that day. It was just a really odd week, but we did get some things done. We will postpone the "first-day" pictures though. There weren't any good days to take outside pictures.
I am still getting to know these (new to us) Thinking Tree books and trying to figure out how to organize the kids' books/work. The suggestion for these journals is to make funschooling baskets with their books and items that relate to the books. I love the concept but don't have room for baskets everywhere, so I'm doing a basket/workbox hybrid type thing. It has the whole day's work in it, including the funschooling journals and fun activities. I am forever trying to figure out how to keep books and daily work organized so we aren't chasing after stuff all the time. I think this might work with some tweaking. I don't know yet. It's a work in progress. This was all of Alex's work for Tuesday, our first day of school.
One of his assignments in his Minecraft math fun school book was to actually build something in Minecraft. He was thrilled. It really was "fun" school. This is what he had to build, a hobbit house. Counting the items was tricky, but it really made him stop and think about how to best divide up the items, and where to put them.
This was his completed hobbit house. I helped him a little (and learned some more about Minecraft), but he came up with the designs and put the items where he wanted to on his own. He just needed a little help keeping track of the numbers.
The inside of his hobbit house. We did have to discuss what exactly is a hobbit too.
This is his reading time journal. He picked The Book Hog for his book page.
It's like a little book report. He forgot to do the bottom left, and I sent the book back to the library. He'll just have to go by memory to complete it!
He put together all 50 states and capitals! I made this states and capitals game earlier in the summer and we finally got it done! He was only supposed to do 5, but he ended up doing all 50. Once he started he couldn't stop. I put little magnets on the back of them so they'd stick to the whiteboard.
We played an Uno matching game with pairs that add up to 10. It was Minecraft themed too just because we already had that game lying around. It works with any Uno game, just find the pairs that add up to 10, lay them out facing down, and find matches.
History this week...
History happened on Thursday. We jumped back into The Story of the World volume 3. We finished chapter 1, finally. We started it last spring, but it got pushed to the side with all the pandemic debacle. School was really hard last spring, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Anyway, it was nice to get back into it. We can finally move onto chapter 2!
We did mapping...
One boy (a certain 6th grader who thinks he's funny) colored his Charles V picture. He decided green hair was in during that time, I guess.
The chapter talked about how much gold had been taken by the Spanish conquistadors and the number was very large. This measuring activity turned out pretty fun for the boys to visualize that number in a different way.
Games we played...
We played Prime Climb. A new game I got for this school year. It's been on my list for a while. This game is a great way to do some fun math.
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