Skip to main content

Homeschool Highlights: Week of Oct. 6

This week Kit went home with Auntie on Monday and spent two nights with her. She has been so excited to go and she asks so sweetly every time Auntie comes for a visit. And I love that she gets some quiet time there. 

Things here at home are very busy and usually fairly noisy, and we have regularly noticed how much calmer and more organized Kit is when the big kids are gone for a bit. We cannot change the fact that she has busy, often bossy siblings that are often a source of frustration and sometimes even anxiety for her, but she can periodically retreat to the quiet of Auntie's house now and again.  

While she was gone, we went swimming like usual on Tuesday, but it felt most unusual without her. 
We had fun though, especially the big kids who got much more Mommy and Daddy time, and especially loved the extra wrestling with Daddy time. 

The big kids each worked on language skills. Zak started a new program aimed at helping middle-schoolers become well rounded writers. He's made such huge progress with writing in the past year I felt he could handle a new challenge, but I let him know that he need not rush through it. He decided to add it to his schedule on Mondays and Fridays, and that works for me. 

Grace's language work right now is mostly done by reading the lesson and prompts and then she delivers her answers to me orally. The coordination, fine motor skills and connections between brain and body make manual writing an extremely challenging and frustrating task for Grace still, often ending in tears and an angry meltdown. To insist that she do it that way is simply not fair to her, because it is not out of stubbornness or laziness that she cannot perform this task. Her comprehension of the subject is well developed and her answers are complete and detailed. That is good enough for me. 

They also worked on geography. And we finished our chapter on Abel in Imitate Their Faith, which we had been neglecting reading for the last several weeks. 

Thursday was rough as Kit tried to transition back into home life after an especially rough first night back. She struggled severely with focus, and her little body couldn't be still for more than a minute or two at a time. There were many meltdowns, and bedtime was very rough, her bath not even seeming to sooth her overactive brain and body hardly at all. Thursday night again was difficult, with her waking frequently and not being able to settle back to sleep until the early morning hours. 

Friday was better. and she even asked to do math while the big kids did theirs. And she math she did! She insisted on doing pages toward the back of the book (aimed at students closer to kindergarten age), so I read her the instructions for each problem, and she blew me away, as usual, by following them exactly or solving them with only minor prompts from me. 

There was subtracting on several of the pages in story form and the only thing I did was read the steps for her and show her how to cover up the ones that were being eliminated, but she followed through by counting the remaining ones and finding the corresponding number at the bottom! Her attention span for academics is incredible. 




On Friday, our tablet, which had been on the fritz all week was finally working again. So the kids were very excited to be able to watch science videos. They watched several episodes of How It's Made, and then moved on to Popular Mechanics for Kids. Apparently, one of these videos was about airplanes and how their shape and design makes than more aerodynamic. Forty minutes later and at least a dozen different folding attempts, several paper airplanes were determined as suitable aircraft. 



The two below were the best and longest flyers. Grace smoothed out the turbulance by attaching paperclips in various places to find the best balance, finding a small one on the underside of the nose and a larger one secured at the back, just below the wings produced the longest flight with the highest altitude. Zak' s best flyer is shaped much like a stealth bomber, but skinnier. They had a lot of fun with this. 


I think we are going to do this again sometime soon and actually measure the distance flown and experiment even more with body designs. 

Not a bad week. How was yours? 

Check out other homeschoolers busy weeks at the Weekly Wrap-Up at wierdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com

Comments

  1. I also have a son with SPD...He would love to make and fly paper airplanes!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm so glad you came by! Paper airplanes are such a great and fun way to bring the mind and body together! Thank you for reading and commenting!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Le Petite Chef: Mud Pie

Here it is, as promised, Grace's Mud Pie recipe! She did all the work, I helped explain terms and measurements, stirred at the very end to make sure everything was evenly coated (at her request), and helped hold the pot. She let one of her friends spread the Nutella and add the "dirt" to one of the pies while she did the other.  This is a very kid friendly recipe, I highly recommend it for ages 8 and up! The original recipe is in the book The Cooking Book, by Jane Bull. But we modified it just a bit. Here are our supplies: 3/4 c butter 1 tbsp cocoa powder 1/2 c sugar 1 c graham cracker crumbs 1/2 c dried fruit 1 chocolate bar (we used Nutella spread instead) We added: Heath chocolate and toffee bits Black Sixletts (found in the party aisle) These are the original measurements, we doubled the recipe though. Step 1: Crush graham crackers. We used a gallon size zipper bag and a coffee mug (I don't own

Saying Goodbye

For the entire month of August, I just didn't let myself think about it beyond the facts. For the last two weeks, I just focused on anything else that took my mind off of it. Over the weekend I was busy getting things ready, so I was too busy to think about it. Tuesday came. Miss V came. It was a good visit, with laughing and smiling, and questions asked and answered, and Kit played with her, and smiled and made us laugh like usual. But it was different, and we felt it. I didn't let myself go there, because I didn't want to break down, not that it would have been the first time in front of her (nor the second, or third, or even fourth probably.)  And then it was time for her to go, and we took some pictures, and all the kids hugged her, and I held Kit on my shoulder on the steps so she could wave goodbye until Miss V is out of sight like she has every week for at least five months. And then we closed the door, and Kit went on with business as usual, beca

Preschool at Home! Chalkboard Painting

Here is another treasure from the backfiles. This started as an act of desperation on my part, I just needed her to be occupied so I could finish something, but it quickly became one of her favorite activities. If you have a chalkboard (we made ours on a half wall with chalkboard paint), all you need is a paintbrush, sponge, or washcloth, and a cup of water. Dip the brush in the water and have at it! Kit LOVES how the water turns the board black. So often, she will be at this so long that by the time she gets across the board, the first area she painted will be dry and a fresh pallet once again. You can get creative with the things you use as paintbrushes, but she has been completely happy with our basic art brushes from Walmart. I love watching her do this.