One of the things that I really appreciate about homeschooling is the flexibility to change things when needed. Last night, Ciara just couldn't fall asleep. She has had this problem before. I'm not sure what causes it. Unfortunately, when Bob and I are both tired and it's the middle of the night we are not so understanding. I really didn't know what I could do for her.
This morning, when the boys got up and got ready for school, Ciara didn't budge. I just let her be, until the boys left for school. Then I told her that it was time to get up and get moving. Ciara was in a horrible mood, as can be expected from a ten year old who stays up past midnight. I decided to let her be, just a little bit longer. Finally at 10am she got out of bed. Nathan had forgotten his lunch again, so I told Ciara to eat breakfast while I ran Nathan's lunch up to the school. When I got back, we were finally ready to start working.
So this is what I noticed today, even though we got off to a late start, we were able to do everything that we needed to. We did math before Arantxa came at 11 for Ciara's Spanish class. After lunch we did mental math, Ciara read a book online and then we learned about the Olympic games in Ancient Greece. I had no idea that they used to run the races naked!
Ciara went to bed at a normal time tonight, so let's hope that we'll be back on track tomorrow.
Showing posts with label Ancient Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ancient Greece. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Week 3, Friday
Forgot to post last night, but I did post to Nathan and Rylan's Lego Blog. Nathan and Rylan's Lego blog has been around since 2010 and gets 10 times more traffic than my homeschool blog. It's true that their content is much more entertaining :)
Yesterday, was a pretty good day. Ciara did a lot of writing, and as an incentive if she held her pencil correctly, I told her we could do our cooking class before math. This worked, and she decided that she would make the same cake as we did last week, but this time, she wanted to do it all on her own. Bonus free time for me! I helped Ciara put the cake into the oven, but otherwise she did everything else on her own and the cake turned out great.
For social studies we are still working on Ancient Greece. This time I thought it would be good to review some of the geography and political system. We have a map of the world in the front hallway that we bought off of Amazon for $4.00 and quite often we run over to the map so that Ciara can see how close we are to many of the Ancient Greek settlements.
Hideyo came over in the afternoon. She is really helping Ciara to gain confidence in her own abilities. Hideyo is very encouraging and gets Ciara excited about accomplishing difficult tasks.
I have noticed that since Ciara has been homeschooled, she really enjoys playing with her brothers. It used to be that after school and on weekends, she would lock herself in her room and not want to come out. The boys would often want to go play at the park, but she would rarely want to go with them. Sometimes she would even hide hoping that we would leave her alone. Now, she is out playing with the boys every day and even initiates the outings.
Yesterday, was a pretty good day. Ciara did a lot of writing, and as an incentive if she held her pencil correctly, I told her we could do our cooking class before math. This worked, and she decided that she would make the same cake as we did last week, but this time, she wanted to do it all on her own. Bonus free time for me! I helped Ciara put the cake into the oven, but otherwise she did everything else on her own and the cake turned out great.
For social studies we are still working on Ancient Greece. This time I thought it would be good to review some of the geography and political system. We have a map of the world in the front hallway that we bought off of Amazon for $4.00 and quite often we run over to the map so that Ciara can see how close we are to many of the Ancient Greek settlements.
Hideyo came over in the afternoon. She is really helping Ciara to gain confidence in her own abilities. Hideyo is very encouraging and gets Ciara excited about accomplishing difficult tasks.
I have noticed that since Ciara has been homeschooled, she really enjoys playing with her brothers. It used to be that after school and on weekends, she would lock herself in her room and not want to come out. The boys would often want to go play at the park, but she would rarely want to go with them. Sometimes she would even hide hoping that we would leave her alone. Now, she is out playing with the boys every day and even initiates the outings.
The map is in the front hallway. You can see our front door and where we put our shoes. You can probably tell from the picture, that we don't have a lot of space in our house here. This is why the map is right by the front door :)
Just a little further down the hallway is our chalkboard right beside the entrance to the kitchen and the living room.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Week 3, Tuesday
This morning, at 9am we had a meeting with the director of the American School of Barcelona to talk about how we could get Ciara registered in school and still homeschool at the same time. The meeting went pretty well. The director is supportive, but will not sign a document saying that Ciara is attending school this year, when she really isn't. So he came up with a compromise: we register Ciara and she attends school part-time and then I homeschool part-time. We agreed that this could work for us. How exactly it will work, we won't know until the director meets with the elementary principle. Since grade 6 is pretty full, she might have to work with the grade 5s.
In any case, I am kind of relieved that we at least have a solution in the works that will allow me to continue homeschooling while also allowing us to comply with Spanish laws. Ciara may benefit from attending school part-time as well. It will mean that I will have to redo our awesome homeschool schedule, but at least I wrote it all in pencil.
Today we continued to work on improper fractions, this time the questions were word problems. Word problems are a difficult for all of my kids. Nathan, who works so hard in math, just can't seem to figure them out. When Rylan and Ciara encounter a word problem they just look like deer caught in the headlights. The word problems we did today, were pretty difficult. Ciara has the skills to solve them, she just has a hard time determining which equations to use. We did all of our math work on the chalkboard so that we could draw pictures and break down the problem into small steps.
For social studies, we are still looking at Greek mythology. Ciara is fascinated with the stories about the Greek Gods. Today she learned about Pandora's box. Ciara was so excited about Pandora, that she had to recount the whole story to Verina when they began their Skype session.
Tonight, I took Ciara to her judo class again. She was a bit apprehensive as we entered the gym. I think that she always feels a wave of anxiety whenever she enters a crowded place. Since she liked her first class, we signed her up and bought her a judo-gi. She felt good about wearing her new judo-gi and when I picked her up after class, she said that she had a good time. I was so relieved. Nathan also decided to try a judo class and he liked it too. So we will probably have two kids in judo. I also signed Cole and Rylan up for swimming lessons at the local rec. center. I feel like we are really broadening our horizons. This is the first time any of my kids have attended extra-curricular classes outside of the school.
In any case, I am kind of relieved that we at least have a solution in the works that will allow me to continue homeschooling while also allowing us to comply with Spanish laws. Ciara may benefit from attending school part-time as well. It will mean that I will have to redo our awesome homeschool schedule, but at least I wrote it all in pencil.
Today we continued to work on improper fractions, this time the questions were word problems. Word problems are a difficult for all of my kids. Nathan, who works so hard in math, just can't seem to figure them out. When Rylan and Ciara encounter a word problem they just look like deer caught in the headlights. The word problems we did today, were pretty difficult. Ciara has the skills to solve them, she just has a hard time determining which equations to use. We did all of our math work on the chalkboard so that we could draw pictures and break down the problem into small steps.
For social studies, we are still looking at Greek mythology. Ciara is fascinated with the stories about the Greek Gods. Today she learned about Pandora's box. Ciara was so excited about Pandora, that she had to recount the whole story to Verina when they began their Skype session.
Tonight, I took Ciara to her judo class again. She was a bit apprehensive as we entered the gym. I think that she always feels a wave of anxiety whenever she enters a crowded place. Since she liked her first class, we signed her up and bought her a judo-gi. She felt good about wearing her new judo-gi and when I picked her up after class, she said that she had a good time. I was so relieved. Nathan also decided to try a judo class and he liked it too. So we will probably have two kids in judo. I also signed Cole and Rylan up for swimming lessons at the local rec. center. I feel like we are really broadening our horizons. This is the first time any of my kids have attended extra-curricular classes outside of the school.
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