Schooling on the Go
I always follow my children's lead in our homeschool whenever possible. I find that allowing them to guide what we're working on works best and keeps them engaged in what we're doing.
I also hope that allowing them to have some say in what we are doing will encourage them to become independent learners.
Today we were going most of our schooling in the car and while I wanted them to be able to choose what to work on I also wanted to make sure that their ideas would travel well.
Luckily we found some great ways to complete school in the car.
My older boys have been enjoying the coloring sheets for math so much that we've unofficially decided to just keep using them until they get bored.
I found some wonderful equivalent fractions coloring pages last night and so they took that into the car with them this morning along with their markers. I had pulled each of them aside this morning individually and reviewed equivalent fractions with them trying to make sure they'd be OK on their own in the car.
The older boys also had some spelling work today; Alec copied his new word list onto our windows using dry erase markers after lunch.
Ian, however, picked a page out of his spelling book and completed it in the car this morning.
Evan picked put his own morning work today.
He chose a roll, draw and write it page for math. Using three dice he writes how many hundreds, tens, and ones he had rolled, draws them out using cubes, tens blocks and one's pieces and then writes the whole number. I packaged up the dice in a small Tupperware type container so he could shake them in the car without having to worry about losing them.
He also chose a sheet where he had to read the two words written next to the picture and circle the correct word. Some of the words had the digraph blends in the middle and so I made sure to go through each picture with him before we left the house. I showed him that when they had the same beginning sound that they didn't always have the same middle or ending sound.
He did great and got all of his work completed correctly all on his own just while driving to karate.
With the bulk of our schooling out of the way we didn't have much to do once we got back home together.
My boy enjoy knowing that after karate our days are a bit lighter.
Once home I cooked lunches while the boys got changed and then we settled down to finish I Survived The Nazi Invasion. It was an amazingly gripping book filled with action. The boys enjoyed this story so much. We even read the four or so pages of facts that the author compiled and looked at the map of the German controlled nations. She explained how Hitler came into power and what Germany was like at the time. There was a wonderful timeline of events outlined in the back of the book that we went through too to help us put all of the stories we've been reading into a timeline of when they all happened.
The boys all settled down to read on their own after lunch. Evan read three more Dick and Jane stories to me and I think the constant repetition of sight word after sight word is really helping him gain fluency and confidence.
Alec settled down to read a Ben 10 book while Ian chose to read a quick Tonka book.
As soon as Evan and Ian were done they headed outside to play in the mud and ride scooters and bikes. It had rained all morning so everything was wet and slushy but they didn't mind.
You know how to make good use of your time! I wonder how children respond to tales such as the the Nazi Invasion. Adults are filled with empathy, sadness anger. perhaps children have a different range of emotions?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing at The Practical Mondays!
Thanks we sure do try! My kids were fascinated by our study of World War II! They were saddened and in awe that children were separated from their families and were relived to discover that there were so many wonderful helpers all around (we mainly focused on the helpers!). Mostly they seemed filled with empathy.
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