Adventures in Home Learning: Episode 1

Hi Folks –

I guess there are a whole lot of us out here right now trying to keep our kids learning, or at the very least, keep ‘em occupied so they don’t burn down the house or drive us crazy. Right?

I have one daughter at home, nine years old. We're taking it slow and trying to do things to practice skills she already knows, but a homeschooling mom I know said it can take THREE weeks to ramp kids up to actual home schooling! (Here’s hoping we’re back to normal life in close to that time.)

Full disclosure, I have a teaching degree, I substitute taught in every grade and subject, and I taught library skills for two years. This is different. I'm referring to all of this as home learning because it’s not regular classroom time and I’m not creating lesson plans with objectives.

We're taking it nice and easy and trying to make learning as self-directed as possible because that creates investment. (And I still have to do my own work from home.)

I let her have a couple days off, until the packet arrived from her teacher. We waited for the packet to arrive from her teachers, but I also had her make a list of all her school subjects. Every day she lists the date and the subjects, and picks something to work on.

I am mostly letting her self-direct because she is capable but I am adding things and checking her work. (This is most necessary in math as she will gloss over the meaning of what is being asked and come up with the wrong answer.)

We have a FANTASTIC packet from all her teachers at the elementary school where we live. She has been working on pages from it every day, but that doesn’t account for all that much time.

Now, she would be very happy to spend her WHOLE day playing Minecraft and watching videos. Mommy would not be so happy.

I figure it’s great to incorporate real world activities and skills, home ec., like cooking and sewing, and there are certainly a ton of virtual tours and activities online. For Science, she has watched a Nova on the planets and listened to a program on Einstein while she made something with Perler beads. (I’m trying to sneak that learning in, but she is NOT impressed, I can tell you.)

Some things we’ve done over the past week –

·       Math worksheets from her teacher.

·       Coloring pages from her art teacher.

·       Perler bead crafts.

·       Started plants indoors.

·       Exercise bike, noting down time, distance, speed, tension, to try to build up and beat it.

·       Watched parts of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from the Royal Ballet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq8zqhqjUIo

·       Watched videos from the Cincinnati Zoo about their hippo, Fiona, and then looked up Hippo facts. https://www.youtube.com/user/CincinnatiZooTube/videos

·       Watched a science experiment from my library and tried to duplicate it. https://www.facebook.com/124737347603282/videos/237619140968664/

My goal is that learning be mostly fun and self-directed, because I have to work too and I don’t want to hear whining.

How are you all handling the "home learning”?