Photos:
Being Artistic,
Being Studious,
At the Texas Tech Museum,
Tadpoles,
Camo and his cousin collecting toad eggs.
What a fantastic journey! We started homeschooling on August 1st and made quite a lot of discoveries about what the little guy had learned and had failed to learn. Where he's on a 9th grade spelling level, grammar is tough, creative writing is tough and math has many lessons that, I guess, were skipped for the benefit of the TAKS test?
So here's what we've focused on this month:
Saxon Math 6/5: One lesson a day, one timed test a day and all is going really well! Some things have been a worthwhile review, while some things are completely new concepts and some are simply a lesson that was never understood, but is now!
Spelling Power: Spelling is something that comes easily to him, and he started leaps and bounds above his age. This led me to alternate spelling and vocabulary (240 Vocabulary Words Every 6th Grader Should Know) on each day. The vocabulary has lead to creative writing using the words and has been a GREAT addition to the week!
For Grammar, we're using two books: Basic First Grammar and Basic First Capitalization and Punctuation which are fantastic for us. This one has been a tougher subject than I would have thought, but he's catching on FAST!
We've done a unit on the Election Process using "Meet the Presidents" and have begun the process of Learning about George Washington. We will be going through each President and learning about each one, and what was going on in the US at the time. (Mixing US History and Government).
Every Friday, we use "The Everything Kids Environment Book" to learn about Environmental Science. This is one of the favorites, because each lesson comes with an experiment. So far, we've made a cloud in a bottle, smog in a jar and a terrarium to learn about the water cycle. This completed Unit one, which was "How our Planet Works" and when coupled with the experiments, even the reading of the information is exciting!
In literature, our first book was/is "The Call of the Wild" and after every chapter, we learn vocabulary words and answer questions about the story. There was some initial problems with reading comprehension, but even that has started to even out and get better! So far, he's enjoying this book!
To help with reading comprehension, we're picking out interesting people in the world, and he reads all about them and then writes a biography report. The first person chosen was Mohandas Gandhi. He read books and biographies and we also watched the movie, Gandhi. I can tell having people of interest to write about helps him comprehend what he has read. This has been a great exercise. (Joan of Arc is next on the biography list!)
Some of the things that we're most excited about this month:
We went to a music class at The House of Blues. It was a concert/presentation on the history of blues music, through slavery, Jim Crow law and up...and also showed how blues music has influenced all music of today. It was INCREDIBLE!
We are also doing a class with some other moms, which has 11 kids in the "class" that meets once a week to do science labs. We will learn the lessons here at home, then get together to "lab" with the other kids. What we do and will do in the labs is: looking at cheek cells under a microscope. Dissecting: long bone, knuckle, brain, heart, kidney, eyeball and a lung. There is one lab (dissection) per week. I think this is the most anticipated thing thus far!
We also collected toad eggs from a creek and have put them in a frog habitat, watched them hatch and become tadpoles! He's documenting and researching every stage of their lives and has drawings and descriptions of every thing that happens every day. (For example, did you know when they hatch, tadpoles do not have mouths? EXACTLY! interesting, right?)
September looks to be even more fun than August, with more plans, football in full swing, and we are having the time of our lives! I'll check back in with new updates!
