This was the week I declared "there is no crying in homeschool!" Too bad that doesn't work (see picture above). In all honesty, the kids have been great, especially since more and more of their friends have returned to daycare/freeschool. The highlights of the week were lunches outside in the sunshine, PJ day, and painting at the end of the week. I have very mixed feelings about the end of homeschooling soon. The kids have done amazing with their work, are eagerly learning each day, and, although it's a lot of work on my part, it's kept me from going insane. Luckily, we'll keep up some of our homeschooling lessons throughout the summer so there's not as much of a backslide in the fall.
For the past few weeks, I've been checking my kid's online platform and worksheet packets and piggyback what we all learn for social studies and science. The oldest's unit on viruses caught my eye, so we studies how they work. Our experiment with bread was a total fail. We had our control bread, fresh out of the bag, and our piece of bread that we stepped on (above), rubbed under noses, rubbed on a door handle (how the piece broke), and sneezed on. Two days later the control bread was covered in mold while the germs bread was still clean. The kids thought the failed experiment was hilarious. Me, not so much.
In social studies we studied the Roaring 20's. The minis loved the unti. We watched The Jazz Singer during lunch (it took us three lunch times) and then they had to answer questions about the movie and the 1920's.
The kids run and play every moment they have free time, so I haven't worried as much about gym class (plus, we're active every weekend). However, there's been a few games we've had fun with. Our Chalk Challenge was a hit (read about it from last week) and they had a great time with this balance test. They had to get into certain positions and see how long they could stay in that position. I expected it to be a quick activity, but they wound up asking to do it over and over again!
The special message on their Spanish bingo game. Most of the day was watching instructional and teaching videos. As much as I can dislike screen time, we've been using it to our advantage during freeschool.
I've noticed that Mondays and Wednesday we do a lot of hands on activities and have busier days. Tuesdays and Thursday are more book work, worksheets, videos, etc. The kids got to put their Roaring 20's knowledge to use and create a collage using magazines (that I had to panic call my mom for because we have no magazines in the house!). They had to find images that represented the 1920's and then explain their collage to us.
We've been all over the place with science: plants, planting gardens, plant cells, animal cells, sound, pollinators, viruses, natural disasters, random experiments. It's been fun.
For our art classes we studied murals. We looked at street murals around Des Moines, Iowa (the minis and I drove around to different ones and took pictures of them and shared them with the other kids) and famous murals in Museums. Then the kids had two opportunities to paint murals: one mural whatever they wanted on a canvas and then they created a plunger mural together on Friday. My table was full of great works!
Lunches in the playset.
A dreary, rainy day called for a pajama day. Of course, it's a school day so basically all that meant was doing their school work while they sat on their sleeping bags in their comfy jammies. It's the little things.
A friend surprised me with my favorite Starbucks drink. It was soooo very much appreciated and such a sweet surprise. It truly made my day. I've been so lucky these past few weeks to be shown love from all corners of my life. We've also enjoyed passing it on.
Homemade play dough. I've had the kids make more and more themselves. Everything from snacks, to treats, to lunches, to sensory activities.
Typing accomplishments.
Reading for the day was taking turns reading stories fom Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. They took it one step further and told their own scary stories when we were done reading.
I love watching during their free times every afternoon. All kids kind of doing their own things yet talking to each other.
Friday free time is the best (according to the kids). We finally got the inside of the play house painted after we did plunger painting. We've had to wait for warmer, dry weather to get it done. Hopefully the outside will be done soon too!
The kids LOVED doing this! The plungers stuck to the table a little bit which caused a sliding effect. The second paper we put on the driveway and the kids wound up sliding the plungers across the paper instead of "plunging." The kids called the second paper "the puke paper" because of the colors.
Lots of writing for the week. Elizabeth's is explaining how she would definitely be a flapper girl in the 1920's. She's also decided this year's Halloween costume (flapper girl). Harrison had some fun with the "what would you do with a pet alligator?" writing piece. Max was obsessed with learning about Al Capone and prohibition.
