Our first official week of SK homeschooling.

So, after much deliberation with teachers and experts, we decided to do homeschooling with Rachel for this year of SK.  She'll attend the afternoon program for the play/social time, but all the morning will be with us doing schooling stuff. :)

Our first week was amazing.  We started with a unit on fossils.  So, we went camping to a provincial park that had an abundance of fossils.

We got the following accomplished.

Mighty Girl of the Week: Mary Anning, Fossil hunter from GB

Math

   3 pages of MEP (Red book 1A - grade 1 )

Reading

   She read: 

       Me on a Map by Joan Sweeney

       Callum’s Incredible Construction Kit

       Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

       Marley and the Earth Day Celebration

   We read:

        Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone

        Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter

        Rapunzel (original by brothers Grimm)

Science

     Programs at Pres’quile Nature Center

        Invasive Species

        Baby Birds

      1 hour walk on the board walk through the marsh.

      Fossil hunting on the Beach

      She learned to read a thermometer and recorded temps in both C and F.  We talked about different units and measured things like the picnic table with different length items. 

      She compared temps day to day and constructed comparisons.  Was today hotter than yesterday?

     She practiced reading a compass (and finding hidden lollypops on the campsite).  I gave instructions such as “Go ten steps East”.

Oh, and she excavated a Mammouth.

Art/Geography

       Painted an Inn sign (in the British Inn tradition) for the camp site.

       Found Toronto and GB on a globe

Brave Writer/The Wand (Language Arts)

       Completed week 1 of The Wand: phoneme, grapheme, Hop on Pop, reviewed that names start with uppercase letters.  She did a page of copy work and then wrote the letters for the sounds I made.  We reviewed which letters are vowels. and made up rhyming words using bananarama tiles based on “op”.

Started the Fairytale unit in Brave Writer.  I read Rapunzel (and she had seen the movie).  We compared the two versions and noted the differences.  She drew a picture of Rapunzel and retold the story in her own words.

"When the man went down to get the herb the second time, he met the enchantress. He made a deal with the enchantress.  When the baby was born the enchantress stole her. When she was twelve, the enchantress locked her in a tower.  She would say, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let go your long hair." She runs away and puts Rapunzel in the desert. And then she had a girl and a boy.  Then the prince found her.  He led her back to his castle.  The end."

In addition, we camped, made new friends, she had her first crush, played on both a rock beach and a sandy beach, and went to the cottage for the weekend.  We sat on the beach before going to bed and looked at the starry sky over Lake Ontario.

I dashed up to Bancroft to investigate rocks and exploration opportunities.  I brought back some sodalite (polished and unpolished) and a new pick, and little leather gloves for Rachel.

She also spent Thursday, all day, at Colwell since I had to work that day.  All in all, our first week was fantastic.  I'm surprised by how much time we had to play and explore outside of the hour or so we did on basics every day.