Skip to main content

Homeschool in October

This month, I have been very glad to be homeschooling.  The shine of public school has definitely worn off for all the neighborhood kids.  This means that I hear a lot of temper tantrums in the mornings in the parking lot.  It also means that Soren has stopped begging for something I know he would hate.  We have been able to stop pining and start gloating.

I'm gloating because:
   * We get to be together.  I love that.
   * I don't have to leave the house when it is cold and dark outside.
   * The kids don't have homework.
   * We have time to go on cool field trips.
   * We aren't in a hurry.
   * We don't have standardized tests coming up.  (Seriously?  Our neighbors are having standardized tests for preschool!)
   * Soren and Carl help out around the house a lot.
   * I get to watch the boys play and observe first-hand how they are incorporating the things they learn.
   * All my former Kindergarten students talk wistfully of the good ol' days.
   * Our curriculum rocks!

In Kindergarten

Tikki Tikki Tembo - The kids went to the Hutchins' house for the first unit of the month and my friend Megan told them the story of Tikki Tikki Tembo.  Soren really took to the story.  He told me that since he was "the first and honored son" that I should have given him a longer name.  He experimented with some variations on his own name for awhile that were pretty fun.  I think he missed the point of the story entirely; it is Tikki Tikki Tembo's ridiculously long name that gets him into so much trouble!  On the last day of the unit, Megan made rice cakes with the kids.  Scott said they tasted very authentically Chinese.  No one but Carl really liked them.  However, Carl liked them enough to make up for everyone else.  He plowed very steadily through the whole batch!

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin - I wanted to tell a spooky story for the second unit of October but I remembered how upsetting that was to Soren last year and decided against it.  Instead, I picked a Beatrix Potter book called The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.  It's about a family of squirrels who gather nuts on an owl's island, which makes it a great story for fall.  The text is full of very old-fashioned riddles, which I memorized and used in the telling.  The riddles were a huge hit!  The boys enjoyed the silly language and I enjoyed listening to them speculate about what the answers might be.  They didn't solve any of the riddles correctly but their ideas were certainly inventive.  (Carl is pretty certain that Hitty Pitty is a spider.)  I chose nursery rhymes about nuts to accompany the stories: The Leaves are Green and I Had a Little Nut Tree.  I wanted to make buckeye candies with the kids as part of this unit but another neighbor made a huge batch for a catering job and shared some with us.  So we just ate hers and didn't make more.

The Frog Princess - For the end of October and going into November, Megan is doing a unit on a little-known Russian fairy tale: The Frog Princess.  As all good Russian fairy tales do, it features the unusual witch Baba Yaga as well as an evil lich whose death is hidden in something like a living turducken.  It's quite a bit more serious and complicated than the stories we usually chose for Kindergarten so I will be interested to see how the boys respond to it.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...
2 comments
Read more

Just Enough is More

They say that later-born children have skinny photo albums.  While parents lavish attention on the firstborn (making certain to record every milestone and in both print and pixels), later children are forgotten and neglected.  So the common wisdom goes. Maybe its true.  There are certainly fewer posts on this blog about the younger boys than there were about the older ones.  And there's no doubt about it: fewer photos are taken now-a-days.  I don't even want to talk about videos.  Poor neglected Leif.  According to the records, he's hardly even a presence in this house. Except that's not true. The paucity of posts and pictures does not reflect an absence of affection.  It does not speak to my feelings about living with children at all.  I find them no less delightful and amazing than I did eight years ago when I first began my mothering journey.  If anything, the little ones delight me even more now.  I know better how to enjo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...
1 comment
Read more