One of the more challenging aspects of homeschooling is finding a rhythm and schedule that meets the needs of everyone in your family. It is something that I am keeping at the forefront as we continue this homeschool journey of ours. As a family that does not thrive in a heavily scheduled environment, I have used daily rhythms to keep us on track and make sure that we get all of the work done.
As this week has proven, this method works really well in a homeschool environment to encourage exploration and spend extra time on topics we are struggling with. Some days we took some extra time to work on Language Arts and some we let our minds explore some of the questions our kindergartner asked through the scientific method. With that said, it was not a week of rigirous school but I will still share our week below.
History
This week in history the memory work is about the Greek and Roman gods. When I first read some of the history sentences we were supposed to memorize I couldn’t help but thinking what significance Greek and Roman gods have in our studies. Thankfully, at our community day we discussed a “Challenge Connection” that memorizing the names of these gods in early life help when kids get into the Challenge (or high school) program where they read and discuss Ancient Greek and Roman literature like the Iliad and The Odyssey. And even in our own very shallow exploration we learned that the planets were named after Roman gods.
We started out with the catchy song to memorize the names of the Greek and Roman gods that can be found here and a coloring sheet that I found on CC Connected. I reserved a children’s book about mythology from our local library and we enjoyed reading through that and discussing myths, legends and gods.
The book did a great job of explaining origins of myths and gods throughout ancient history and even though I only have a kindergartner we discussed how people didn’t have the technology and scientific tools that we have today so they would make up stories to explain phenomenon that seemed mystical to them. For example, lightning bolts were thrown by Zeus but we now are able to examine and study how lightning is formed through science.
A fun activity that we did not get to is making our own mythical creature. There are prompts in the book that we read but this could easily be achieved by printing out various animal drawings and cutting and pasting them together. BOOM you have your own mythical creature! You can get as wild as you want to because honestly, some of the mythical creatures in history were insane looking!
Science
Our memory work for the week was the parts of an animal cell. We honestly did not focus on this as much as I had planned. There were some fun coloring pages with handwriting practice that I found on CC Connected. I like incorporating things that have handwriting practice so that we can combine two subjects in one.
To explain what cells are, I planned to print out/draw an outline of a human or favorite animal then discuss that all animals are made up of tiny cells. To demonstrate, take liquid glue and fill in the animal then sprinkle something super small like mustard seeds or chia seeds all over so that it fills the entire image. Talk about how cells are even smaller than the tiniest seed and we need a powerful magnifying glass (microscope) to be able to see them.
Other fun activities include making a paper plate cell diagram , making a cell out of jello and other edible items, making a play dough cell etc.
For experiments this week we discussed why animals camouflage and why some animals live underground. The ground temperature experiment was perfect for this slightly fall weather! At our community day, one of our thermometers disappeared so the kids did not get to fully complete the experiment but we decided to replicate it at home with our laser thermometer (kitchen grade). Simply find a spot in the sun and take the temperature and record it. Dig a hole in the ground a few inches deep and record the temperature from the hole. We took it a step further and measured the temperature of the concrete driveway then counted the difference in all of the temperatures. From our findings it was a 10 degree difference from the concrete to the hole and a 5 degree difference from the ground to the hole. I let Drew draw his findings in our school journal and helped him write the temperatures.
This week I utilized our local library’s online site where I got some books on hold that they delivered to our closest branch! What a great and free homeschool resource! We got books about animal camouflage, animals that live in burrows and Greek mythology! The boys really enjoyed “There’s Room for More” a heartwarming story about 2 wombats that share their large burrow with animals trying to escape the bush fires in Australia.
Art
This week in art we were learning about upside down images. Personally, I did not find any independent activities to supplement what we did during our community day so we
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