Thursday, September 25, 2014

School on the Go

This morning I had to take the my youngest child to a WIC appointment. I told the kids to bring their school with them. At first there was much grumbling and gnashing of teeth but I reminded them how long the wait is at that office. They had the choice to get as much work done while there and then go home and play OR sit in the boring office for hours with nothing to do and then go home and have to do schoolwork when their friends are out of school and ready to play. They chose to bring their school work. Not EVERYTHING could be done there but they were able to do most of it. The WIC staff complimented me on how studious they were. 
  • They did their language lessons in the car on the way there. Skittles wrote a narration about his picture study. I had him write his answers in complete sentences. Twizzler just had to answer a couple of questions about the days of the week. 
  • Writing was easy to do in the waiting room. The Pictures in Cursive books fit into the subject dividers in their binders perfectly. I might keep them in there from now on. It might protect them from being torn up. 
  • I gave them their spelling test in the waiting room too. I was afraid it would be awkward but it was really easy to do. I just read off the words and they wrote them down. Skittles misspelled lasagna. He has been struggling with that word all week. He said, "Why do I have to spell an Italian word?" LOL
  • They both read their books. Skittles read chapter 4 of Number the Stars. His interesting word for the day was 'relocate'. Twizzler finished reading his Star Wars book. He read about Ahsoka fighting General Grievous. I don't remember that happening... I am going to have to read it myself. He has 2 books completed for the Book It  program. 6 more to go and he gets a free pizza! 
  • Then they practiced their bible verses in their Awana books. 
  • When we got home we read our history lesson. We read our apologetics page. It was about a canal in Egypt that Joseph built that is still working today and is named after him. Then they journaled their favorite part of the history lessons this week. Twizzler liked the story of Jacob and Esau. He drew the brothers. Skittles liked the story of Joseph becoming the second in command. 
           He drew Joseph in Egyptian clothing. They also added Joseph in Egypt to their timelines. Skittles read about How Jacob got the name Israel and what it means and then wrote a narration about it. 
  • They did their math lessons. Skittles did more multiplication review. Twizzler did subtraction review. 
  • In science the boys researched how we use wind to pump water, grind grain, and now to create electric energy. I also had them draw a picture of a modern wind turbine. They see them all the time when we visit our family in Rhode Island so they knew how to draw them well. 

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a good use of errand time! I love that the staff noticed they were working hard.

    A long time ago we were sitting in a waiting room and one of my kids was reading about Harriett Tubman I think. A woman walked by and happily made note, "You are studying Black History Month!" My kid had no clue what she meant because we study black history ALL the time. We weren't just studying black people connected with Harriett Tubman. We were studying how individuals of all races responded to injustice. History is one long story and everyone is connected. Often public school wants to compartmentalize history. I'm not so sure Black History Month is furthering the cause of moving on from racial prejudice. It sounds like, "We aren't doing a very good job of studying famous people of all races through the year, so we'll make sure to set aside a month to be sure we don't omit a race." What kind of message does that send to children?

    My kid's response to the woman who asked the question about whether they were studying Black History Month was, "No. I'm just studying history."

    Carrie

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