Monday, February 21, 2011

Homeward Bound

After much deliberation, we've made the decision to homeschool our children next year.  There were a lot of factors playing into this decision, and we're very excitedly dorking out looking at microscopes that we can have for our home school setting.  :-)

It's February vacation, and the horde has already jumped in with both feet to learning at home.  This morning we looked up systems of classification for living things, and had the boys excitedly yelling out "CHORDATA!" for what animals have spinal cords, trying to climb the walls like anthropods, being mushy mollusks, and squirming on the ground like the annelida worms.  Straight from there we went to writing exercises where Papa Bear independently wrote 2 paragraphs about mollusks and Yogi Bear dictated to me information about athropods.

Here's Yogi's story:

"Hi, my name is Exoskeleton, and I am an arthropod.  Arthropods are different phylums from other animals and other kingdoms, even different from the plant kingdom.  Even different from annelida, the worms, and mushy mollusks.  Because I am an arthropod, I have an exoskeleton.  It is like outside armor bones.  Animals that are athropods are insects that can climb on walls, spiders, and crabs.  To get rid of an arthropod, you step on it, because that cracks its exoskeleton."

Not bad for a kindergartener!  He had some help, obviously, but this was largely his work with my typing and some mild direction.

So, homeschooling readers, how do you structure things?  We're pretty old school and plan on following Classical education principles, but switching it up by keeping a giant question jar and talking over one question per day at dinner time.

1 comment:

  1. Welcome to homeschooling! I have heard to take it easy the first year if you are pulling your kids out of traditional school. That the first year is a transition year. I do not know this from experience, just what other moms have said to me over the years.
    As for structure--I do a very structured curriculum. It's not for everyone, but it works well for our family. Seton Home School is what it is called and it's basically traditional school but done at home. But, after the kids get it done, they have the rest of the whole day to pursue their interests.
    Good luck, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have!

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