Getting Started....

I realise that I am blogging a little out of order here but things have finally settled down and I have had a chance to sit down and write some longer posts.

From the idea to homeschool Will to the decision to starting homeschool took from a Wednesday afternoon to the following Monday morning. It was super fast and as a result I threw together a programme very fast with minimal planning and we are now in the process of fleshing that out.

Before Will finished school I went and got some stationery and a few workbooks. We also have some supplementary books from the library and his school books. We also got him a desk and chair. We rearranged some things in the playroom, making table, and scrapbook room to accommodate his school work. And I re-familiarised myself with the huge load of stuff we have in our house for learning.  We joined HEN which is the Home Education Network for Victoria, Reading Eggs, Mathletics, and RemidaWA. Down the track we'll also get a Scitech membership.

 

I made a basic outline of an ideal week and what we hope to include. This has already been modified quite significantly because of the limits placed on us when Tama is home- he is a very real distraction and he also likes to have his own  book work if that's what Will is doing- so we do less bookwork when he is home and Will does more independent work- eg Mathletics and Reading Eggs. 

 

My focus for now is mostly on Literacy, numeracy, self-directed learning (topic), fine motor activities, and living and moving. And so most of my original planning was done around those. Will expressed a desire to build on the learning we had already been doing around the local Bird life- something that the boys have both been interested in since the start of the year.

 

Our first homeschool day without Tama included a bunch of assessments so I could see where Will was at in his reading, maths, and spelling among others... he's doing really well. Which to be honest was a bit of a surprise because his teachers spent so much time on their 'issues' with him that we never did get to hear how well he was going. 

What we are doing:

 

Literacy:

Reading activities with books from the Library. 

Shared novel: James and the Giant Peach. 

Library once a week.

Silent reading.

Bedtime Stories.

'Topic based' reading.

Reading Eggs (online).

Poem of the week.

Story Writing and Letter writing.

Spelling list and activities 

Nb. We are doing some of this consistently and some  goes by the wayside if something comes up- like an Excursion or Science week etc.

 

Printing practice 4x a week as this is something that needs a lot of work. 

 

Numeracy:

Mental Maths 

Practice activities in number 

Place Value. 

Maths games

Mathletics

'Topic'

Our bird study is a combination of Literacy, Science, art and technology. I like to try and work through Blooms Taxonomy of learning with this sort of work, because really whatever Will choses to study is for me more about teaching him how to learn- than the actual topic, that's just a bonus. 

 

So we might start just working out what we already think we know, what we want to know, and then gathering knowledge and information. For example identifying the birds around us and their homes.

 

Then we move on to understanding what we've learnt. For our bird study we are classifying our birds by their habitats and also their feet/legs. Describing them, comparing and contrasting.

We're going to apply that knowledge by designing some bird sculptures for the garden. And creating some images of feathers with pencils and watercolour paints.

 

We're going in analyse the places we found the birds and the types of feet they have to find any connections. 

 

We'll synthesise the information by creating our bird sculptures and also bring our excursion photos together in a project form- yet to be decided by Will. 

The final evaluation stage will be going back to our original brainstorming rubric and assessing if what we knew was correct, whether we answered all our questions, and what other information we gained.

This time around I have set the parameters/tasks/goals for this work- but I intend for Will to take more control and leadership next time around. (He's decided on Geophysics and Nuclear Physics).

Fine-motor

One of the areas that Will struggles with is his fine motor skills. So some of the activities we do are aimed at building his hand strength and helping him to hone his skills. This includes the work with tools on the 'Making table' (our art zone), Potions Table and wood work, working with Clay, playdough, free choice drawing, Block and lego challenges, and some of the tasks he is assigned when we cook.

Living and Moving

This includes but is not limited to: cooking, dancing, swimming, hockey, cycling, board games, outside play, helping at home, singing, walking, shopping, gardening, listening to music, and trampolining.

Our school hours are not limited to week days or 9-3. We often go well past 3 on a weekday depending on what is happening, what we are doing. And weekends often include hockey, outside play, bike riding, excursions, cooking etc. We very rarely do school work on a Monday- it's like a recovery day post weekend- and often when I do planning, preparation and my own things on the computer.

School for us very rarely looks like this!
♥