Skip to main content

To impress the piano teacher...



This morning we made time to practice music flash cards. Rose wanted to be sure we took pictures of that moment and put it on the blog because her piano teacher informed her yesterday that she's been reading my blog regularly! Let's hope more practice works out and the piano teacher is also impressed by Rose's quick knowledge...

Today I wrote down a schedule for our homeschooling. As you can see, we're using short lessons for about two hours in the morning. It's a lot to get through fast, and makes me wish we had the afternoon to do some things more leisurely, but I think this will work out well for Rose.

Here's the schedule (which of course is subject to change for any of various reasons):
8-9 a.m. Wake up, dress and brush teeth, make beds, eat breakfast
9-9:20 a.m. Reading
9:20-9:40 a.m. Math
9:40-10:00 a.m. Spelling and grammar
10:00-10:20 a.m. Piano practice, music flash cards, composer study
10:20-10:40 a.m. History and Geography or Science (depending on the day)
10:40-11 a.m. Art or handwork (mainly fun stuff to give mom time to make lunch)
11 a.m. Lunch, clean up, get ready for afternoon at school
11:45 a.m. Leave for school

Rose really likes to keep moving and this accomplishes that. A lot of the subjects we're just doing are continuing what she's been doing at school, such as math and spelling, to finish out the year. Reading is mainly for fun and practice, and I ask her to "narrate", or retell, what we read the day before. This is a good way to remember and comprehend the good books we're reading.

When Eli feels better, we're going to make a volcano as a science experiment. I found an easy recipe for making one here. Even I'm excited about trying this, which is just a really simple thing but I've never seen it before.

So far Eli is still coughing away, though his fever is gone. Now I seem to have a sore throat and cough again, but hopefully I won't get it really bad. I just had this a couple weeks ago, and really bad! I'm taking my vitamins and elderberry.


If we get things done more quickly than the what the time calls for, we have plenty of time for play moments (on Rose's part), laundry and cleaning moments (on my part), and even potty breaks, unlike in school. Above is Dolly lounging in the sun on the dining room table...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lisa Zahn, Life Coach--Some Exciting News!

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to tell you I now have my very own domain and website dedicated to my new, thriving business as a co-active life coach. I recently completed training through the wonderful Coaches Training Institute and am working my way toward certification as a Certified Professional Co-active Coach (CPCC). I write regular blog posts and a weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for and receive via email , over at lisazahn.com now. I think you'll enjoy following along over there. And go check out my site--it's beautiful!
Post a Comment
Read more

Homeschooling/Unschooling Almost A Year Now

The kids took their annual, required standardized achievement test yesterday. This is the law in Minnesota, homeschoolers have to take the test and keep it in the files at home but we don't have to turn it in to the district or anything, unless there's a problem. It seems reasonable to me. Yesterday's test went well. A friend of mine, a former teacher, does the testing as a business, so the kids are really comfortable with her. She sets up her "office" at the library and devotes about an hour to each kid, using the Peabody Individual Achievement Test . The categories in the Peabody test are General Information (science, social studies, art, etc.); Reading Recognition; Reading Comprehension; Mathematics; Spelling. There are 100 questions per category, though they don't start each child at number 1 but somewhere before/below where they should be at and work up from there. One of my kids , age 9, tests just at or above her grade level. This is great. A confirmat...
13 comments
Read more

On Family Meetings and Chores

ON FAMILY MEETINGS: On Friday night we held our first-ever Zahn Family Meeting. I've always felt that families who hold family meetings are so, well, organized and democratic and all that and we've just never gotten around to them (which speaks to my lack of organization, and probably democratic-ness, too). But on Thursday, after "crabbin' out" at the kids for not helping around the house enough, I decided to call a Family Meeting for the following night. I made the announcement to all, including dear husband, that the meeting would take place at exactly 6:30 p.m. after our Previously Scheduled Family Dinner at exactly 6:00 p.m. Just trying to be organized here... I asked the family members to come up with agenda items. Mine, of course, would be the subject of chores. I also said I would give a Treasurer's Report (a.k.a. "why we haven't paid your allowance since Christmas"). So the appointed hour came and the Meeting commenced. I asked for agenda...
14 comments
Read more