Skip to main content

Weekly Wrap-up ~ Introducing "Freedom Fridays" (Prairie Primer: Silver Lake Week 2)


This month our Prairie Primer lessons have us memorizing the states and their capitols in the order they were admitted into the union. We work on three states each day. Eli mentioned that he wanted to watch the clips about each state from our dvd set "The States" (History Channel) as we are learning about them. We have watched this series once before, but it is very informative and enjoyable to watch. As it usually takes at least a half-hour to forty-five minutes of our day to watch three clips, I have had to readjust some of what we try to accomplish each day to make room. But they really, really enjoy them. Delight-directed learning is important. Plus, their interest in the states is also helping them in memorizing the capitols and state abbreviations. We are through the 19th state in a week.


We learned all about the history of the steam locomotive by watching "The History of Steam Locomotives" (pts 1-3) on Youtube. We also read The Stourbridge Lion: America's First Locomotive by Karl Zimmermann.

A field trip to the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railway would be fun, huh? (St. Louis is one of our favorite places to go for mini-vacations.) There you can take a 2-hour ride in a passenger car pulled by a steam locomotive. Then we could go to The St. Louis Museum of Transportation and see "Big Boy", the largest steam locomotive in the world's history, as well as learn about other railway history. That would be an awesome two-day trip and one that I am seriously considering scheduling.

We started learning a tiny smidge about bird migration. The kids did watch a short video, but that's as far as we got. I've got some good resources so we are going to plan a day next week to do everything.

We finished our "Which Surface Has the Most Germs" experiment. It was a gross one, but lots of fun!!


The rest of our subjects rolled along smoothly. We hit the 3R's every day, moving nicely from one lesson to the next.


I am happy to report that the kiddos are mastering long division and are through Lesson 24 of Math U See Delta. We will have this level complete in a few weeks and will be ready to move onto Epsilon and fractions.


I wrote in my Random 5 yesterday about how Fridays tend to get away from us in regards to our actual school work. I feel torn between things I need to get done around the house and actually instructing my children for 6 hours. The house typically wins out. So taking some cues from some of my favorite homeschool IGers, I am instituting a delight-directed learning opportunity (unschooling-ish) routine on Fridays called "Freedom Friday".

The kids have to finish their work from the week that didn't get completed, read for one full hour throughout the day (in increments of their choosing), and do one writing assignment. The rest of the day is theirs to do and learn as they so choose, as long as they are pursuing learning until 4:00 p.m.! It can be in the form of creating, watching videos, playing educational games, playing board games, playing outside, building, whatever. Not only do the kids have freedom to do what they choose (and learn how to fill empty space with worthwhile activities), but I also have the freedom to get things done that I really need to do without taking away from their learning. How liberating!

What did they choose to do this week, and how did it go?

Well, we had a few extra assignments to finish because Brynne was sick last Friday which put us a day behind. The kids started their day with CNN Student News (don't want to miss it no matter what!), math, grammar, and a writing assignment (letters of invitation). This took them through the morning until lunch.


After lunch they decided to read for a bit and then pulled out a board game. This wasn't the educational type game that I would have chosen (The Game of Life), but it was great for them to play something together. We will work on game choices later.


They took turns playing Stack the States and Stack the Countries on the iPad. They had forgotten how much they love these games, so much so that they ended up playing them for about an hour past time to conclude school for the day. Eli also put together some Legos, and they both got their reading done with no problems and put some pretty good dents in their books.


Brynne is reading the first book in the Warriors series. Eli finished one of his Middle School books and then scooped up Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Long Haul that he got for Christmas.


What did I do? I did several loads of laundry, washed sheets, put away said loads of laundry, made food for a banquet we went to last night, ran some errands, exercised, took a shower and put on real clothes, fixed meals, and unloaded the dishwasher. Since we do schoolwork in the dining room and living room, I was in and out and around the kids all day while they did their work, stepping in to aid when necessary or to just hear about something they were learning.

I would say it was a pretty good success this first week.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

A Thomas Jefferson Education "This Week in History" ~ Schoolhouse Review

Talk about a GOLD MINE! A Thomas Jefferson Education's This Week in History by Rachel DeMille is her "labor of love" ... and I absolutely LOVE it! " This Week in History is a daily resource that brings your home school or classroom to life." For just $9.99 per month, you can log onto TJEd.com and click the "This Week in History" link to obtain many, many, many resources tied to specific events that occurred in the upcoming week in history. Or even better, you can receive the summaries and links to ALL resources right in your email Inbox each week! It doesn't get any easier than that! What does this really look like in real life? Each week, I receive an email from Rachel DeMille that sets out each date of the coming week. Under the date, there are listed anywhere from one to several events that occurred in history on that date. THEN there are ALL kinds of things to do related to that event, such as books to read, websites to visit, ac

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.