Tag: field trips

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Field Trips School Day Sonlight Core A

Weekly Recap – in which I recap TWO weeks

Forgive me for not recapping last week.  We took a field trip to Montgomery with our co-op.  It’s a good two hour drive so it was a busy day!

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I’m glad we went.  BigG was really excited about going.  Which is great, because I thought it might be too boring for a 6 year old.  But he had a great time.  I’ll tell you more about it in minute.

Let’s start at the beginning of the week.

We were reading My Father’s Dragon and have enjoyed it a lot more than the first read-aloud in Sonlight Core A.  Well, BigG enjoyed the Boxcar Children but I did not.  But we’ve both enjoyed My Father’s Dragon.

Here’s what he worked on during read-aloud time (because he has to have something for his hands to do):

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If you’re familiar with the book, you might recognize it as a map of the island and all the animals the character meets.  The black thing is the dragon flying away.  LOL.  The book is part of a series so I’m hoping the library has the others.

We made fossils out of toy dinosaur skeletons and playdough.  (We were wrapping up the Apologia Zoology 1 chapter on pterosaurs and I needed something to keep him still and quiet for a few minutes.  It was a big hit!  He’s done it twice on his own since!)

History was Vikings.  BigG loves vikings.  We recently read Imagination Station: Voyage with the Vikings so everything we learned from it was fresh in our minds.  We’re on book 4 of the Imagination Station series and we love it!  They’re a lot like Magic Tree House books but with a Christian spin.  We usually read them at bedtime.  It’s our non-curriculum reading but equally as educational.

So then there was Montgomery.  We went to:

It was a lot of fun!  But boy were we tired!  But not too tired to stop at Peach Park in Clanton on our way home for ice cream!

The Saturday, we went to the Anniston Museum of Natural History for free admission day they do once a year.  We always love our trips to the Anniston Museum!  There was a reptile show too.  BigG loved it!

Well, that was last week.  This week, we managed to stay in our county.  LOL.

We just started our next read aloud in Core A – The Hundred Dresses.  And history this week was all stories from I Heard the Good News Today.    I’m really pleased and pleasantly surprised at how much we are both enjoying this book!  This week we read about St. Patrick, Columba and Boniface.  All of them were missionaries in the early ADs.  I get a devotional in the mail from Samaritan’s Purse (a charity that we support) called Prayer Point and each week it tells a story of what the missionaries are doing in a specific country.  I decided we would pick this up once a week, find the country on the map, read about what the missionaries are doing and pray for the things it lists are being needed in that country.  This has gone over very well.  I’m pleased.

So basically, to recap, things are very positive!  Our Sonlight curriculum is working well!  BigG is being an open, receptive student.  And things are just going well!

We’re taking Monday off to spend with family and swim.  How about you?

Weekly Wrap-Up
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Art School Day Sonlight Core A

Weeks 3 and 4 Wrap Up: Field Trip, History Journals and Art

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Wow, last week was insanely busy.  I didn’t even have time to write about it!    We did take another field trip.  This one was short and only partially educational so we did a half school day that day.   What are your requirements for day to count as school?  I feel like three core subjects must be completed to call it a school day.  Our field trip day coincided with the end of a math unit and spelling test day.  So when we got home he did his tests, reading and a short LA assignment.  School day done.  🙂  (As I’m writing this, today consisted of Science, Reading, Spelling and Art.  We doubled up on some lessons earlier in the week because we have plans tomorrow and then next week is our break.  So we couldn’t really start anything new.   But I still wanted it count today as a school day.  Our state requires a certain number of days to be completed.)

We are rocking along in Sonlight Core A and still loving it!

One thing we started this week to go along with Core A’s history is a History Notebook – or History Journal.  I stocked up on these Primary Journals when they were on sale for back to school.  (I got them for $2 each).  So we’re using one to journal about history.  Which is mostly me writing down important facts after our history readings, having BigG read the facts to me and then illustrating something from the reading.

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Writing skills is something we’re working hard on this year.  But I’m not pushing him because when it comes to writing, that really backfires.  Sonlight’s LA for 2nd is about all the writing he can stand for one day.  So as long as he’s doing that well, I’m ok with him dictating and me writing.  We do the same thing with our Apologia notebook.

As for week 4, we didn’t take any field trips this week.  (I know!  I broke our streak of a field trip a week for 3 weeks!)   We finished reading The BoxCar Children which is the first Read Aloud for Core A.  I’ll be honest, I didn’t love it.  But we did read two stores from James Herriott’s Treasury for Children.  They were sweet stories.  BigG and I both enjoyed them.  I can’t wait to read more.

I’ve also been trying to find something for Art that’s REAL art and can be taught by someone who is not artistic (me).  I came across the Adventures in Art Curriculum at a consignment sale for just $5!   And it just so happened to be 2nd grade!

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We love art.  BigG loves making art and we both enjoying looking at art.  So far, this curriculum is great!

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So that’s four weeks of school down for us!  Local public schools start back next week but we will be taking our first one week break!  Yay!

Next week I will share with you our semi-year round schedule for school.

This is part of the Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Weekly Wrap-Up
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School Day

Wrapping Up Week 2 | Yes, we took more field trips

I really love field trips.  They’re quite possibly my favorite thing about homeschooling.  Last week we went to a show at the Planetarium.  They were having another one this week so we went to it also and while we were out, we used some free passes to the Southern Museum of Flight that we had gotten.

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The Southern Museum of Flight was something we’ve never done before (despite being in close proximity to it) so it was a nice treat.  Plus, unless we’re doing something huge like the zoo, I like to try to squeeze in two “field trips” in one day.  While the Planetarium was great, it was a one hour show.  Kind of hard to justify a one hour show as a whole school day (especially since it was the 2nd time we went in as many weeks).  BigG also did some independent reading in the car and we did Lesson 3 in English for the Thoughtful Child, Vol. 1
(our LA supplement we’re using in addition to Sonlight this year.)  Science, history, reading and English sounds like a day to me.

We also fill out our field trip logs when we get home from a field trip.  So I guess it was science, history, reading, English and writing.

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Last summer we read the book The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot July 25, 1909 
and strangely enough, it turned out to be a book BigG really enjoyed and wanted to read over and over.   He remembers it well so we brought it up while we were at the museum.  BigG also learned about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their first flight from one exhibit.  But aside from that, the museum was more fun than educational.  He liked looking at the planes and he liked the few hands on things but the history of the planes and the science of flight was just a little over him.

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Also this week:

  • We’re two weeks into Sonlight Core A.  I really like it.
  • I realize it’s very Charlotte Mason-ish and I never viewed myself as that kind of homeschooler, but I like English for the Thoughtful Child, Vol. 1.  I got it brand new at a book sale for $3 too.  Awesome.
  • We’re finishing up our BJU Math 1 because we didn’t finish it last year.  See, BigG started the year as a Kindergartener but by October I realized that wasn’t working at all.  So we bumped up to first grade.  Getting a late start meant not finishing all of the 1st grade math.  We managed to finish all the other subjects but not math.  After we finish we’re picking up Singapore Math 1B.  Yes I know there is a 1A and it’s supposed to be for the start of 2nd grade.  But I flipped through it and he could already do everything in it even before he finished BJU Math 1.  So I decided to start at 1B.  We have some math supplements too and we take our time with math.  It’s not a subject I want to run through.  (I was never great at math anyway.  It was always my “sweat subject”.  I had to fight to keep my A average in math in high school when everything else was a breeze.
  • We are also doing Abeka cursive.  BigG begged for the longest last year to start learning cursive.  I promised him in 2nd grade we would.  We do a cursive lesson every day and he willingly writes more than I assign him.  But ask him to write his spelling words?  AGONY.  For both of us.
  • And we finished up our week learning about Monet and doing one of the art activities from the Monet art activities magazine (free to download!)

All in all, I say we’ve had a hugely successful first two weeks of school.

This is part of the Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Weekly Wrap-Up
Categories
School Day

Still Kicking After the First Week of School

Despite a rocky start on Monday we made it through our first week of homeschool!  We even squeezed in a field trip to the Planetarium at Samford University!

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I should’ve mention that we didn’t do FULL school days this week.  We are easing back into the routine.  We’re doing Sonlight for History, Bible, Language, Spelling/Vocab and Reading.  So this week we did the Spelling, Language and Reading Portion of Sonlight each day along with Handwriting (G is SO EXCITED to be learning cursive!!) and we did Math three days this week and Science on one (finishing up Apologia Zoology 1 that we started back in the spring.)

Next week we’re going to add the History and Bible portion of Sonlight to each day, math everyday and aiming for 2 days of Science.  And possibly another field trip.  I do love field trips!

I posted this as part of the Weekly Wrap Up Linky!