River's Edge Urban Academy

Homeschooling 4 kids ages 9, 6, 4 and baby while working as a postpartum nurse and lactation counselor.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Warm Weather

It is 50 today and soooo beautiful. Birds are singing, kids both have scraped knees from riding bikes and scooters outside, and I even saw a bald eagle today!!!
Another school-cancellation-due-to-great-weather-day at our house. After stories with breakfast I was trying to rein Joss is for some reading work when she begged to be allowed to get her "energies out" first. I caved! She actually hauled her own bike out of the garage and through the snowy, icy, muddy mess of a backyard all by herself and had a great time riding back and forth within her "short boundaries" on the sidewalk. Zeff too, had a great time on his scooter and is getting really good at it. They both practiced "skating" as well.
The nice weather is just supposed to last till tomorrow so maybe we'll do a little make-up work on Sunday. Or not. She did some starfall last night of her own volition and read some of Frog and Toad to herself today. She also read Fox in Socks to Zeff. Her reading is getting so much smoother. She no longer sounds out simple short vowel words and has quite a collection of sight words. Long vowel and simple compound words are also getting more fluent, but can trip her up, especially if she is getting tired.
Zeff is actually understanding the principle of adding, from J and M working with him. I swear I've done almost nothing with adding, cuz I thought we needed to be working on number symbol recognition and counting, but he is really understanding how to add on his fingers and with objects within the numbers he really grasps (mostly below 6).
I am really growing some faith in the whole unschooling idea. I am having an idea in my mind of finishing our Calvert curriculum (cuz it was SO EXPENSIVE) and then having a 6-12 month or so unschooling experiment.
I seem to be more natural at creating a good learning atmosphere and exploring things with my kids than I am at following a rigid schedule. I suppose the deciding point will be what works best for them. Anyway, this is just a thought that has been rolling around my brain. No definite plans beyond finishing Calvert 1.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home