Talk about the most anticlimactic ending to a school year, huh?. Does anyone else feel like, what just happened? We’re stumped how to finish, what to start, how much longer.
Do we:
1. finish singing the last weeks of CC – which isn’t fun alone at all !?!
2. keep on crafting our brains out
3. zone out to movie marathons & electronic days
4. brush up on weak skills
5. prep for next year
or
6. start new studies calling it the In-Between Semester?
Quarantine Homeschool – what we’ve been doing
It feels like the school year ended like a neglected deflated birthday balloon. I tried to keep us busy for the last 4 weeks. Sidewalk chalking, Popsicle stick challenging our friends – we made the Once-ler’s house. We found Derby car construction kits online marked down so we made them and raced them. I lost.
There was Lego building bridges & Tinker Crate catapults – which both were really for our Classical Conversations Engineering science lessons. We realized how much Henry loves engineering and I’ll be looking into some STEM things down the road.
Finally after one night of howling at the super pink moon and pointing out constellations, Henry asked, “Can we just keep going with school through the summer?” Music to my ears! I hate lazy days of electronics and sitting around bored asking, “what you want to do, I dunno, what do you want to do”.
The In-Between Semester
April to August offers a solid ‘semester’ (or 1/2 credit if we were in high school). Why waste time taking an extended summer break when we can use 15-18 weeks of morning learning?? Not “school all day” but at least fill out mornings with learning and our afternoons with hiking & biking.
I am super excited to keep digging into Elemental Science, WriteShop, Cartography, Chalk Pastels, and PreAlgebra.
WriteShop: We’ve done zero creative writing this year, cursing our way through IEW most days. It is not a favorite! My oldest son loved the WriteShop Junior D Book (E&F had not yet been created when he did it, so Book F is new to me!). Being a freelance writer, I loved the lessons, writing prompts and assignments. And if you’re not signed up to get her writing prompts – you should check them out! WriteShop Blog.
Math ended last month so I’ve been assigning free 7th grade lessons from Khan Academy. We’ve always used Teaching Textbooks and Henry is not in love with the program. He thinks it’s too slow. It was absolutely perfect for my oldest who struggled in math – but not so much for my youngest.
He excels in math and we both feel Teaching Textbooks holds him back. I know CC uses Saxon Math, and I’ll look into it next year. But right now I’m just going to continue to use the free Khan Academy lessons.
Science: I’ve mentioned before how light Classical Conversations is on work – singing a sentence and calling it “science”. I grabbed Elemental Science a few weeks ago planning on hitting Earth Science and Astronomy over the summer.
Coincidentally, every night at 8pm Coloradans head outside and howl. It sounds bizarre until you experience it for yourself. It’s so fun you can’t help yourself. I’m hoping these little things will end up being great memories for my boys.
While we’ve been outside we’ve seen the magnificent sky which has lead to astronomy questions. It’s been the perfect lead in to Earth Science and Astronomy for the Logic Stage especially since the lessons start with Astronomy! Henry claims he only likes “constellations” right now, but I’m happy we have SO many science resource books on hand.
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Art: Now that we’ve been chalking up the driveway so much – Henry doesn’t feel like chalks are as uncomfortable and messy to use. So it’ll be fun getting into our Chalk Pastels Membership – and the “space” themed class. I love tying science and art together.
Prepping for Challenge A
Next year Cartography is a focus in Challenge A. I grabbed the book during some sale whenever ago just to stash away until it’s need. I think it’s a great time to start practicing sketching maps so it’s fresh / easier for 7th grade.
The In-Between Semester
I believe these next 15-18 weeks is a great opportunity to do something different, engaging, and fun! I see the monkey wrench and I’m choosing to be flexible. I’m choosing to try different things. Rather than complain, vent online, or just let the Wii Switch rule the day. I’m going to benefit from the time we have and the lack of a busy schedule to continue to homeschool. No I don’t plan on writing a masterpiece or learning Chinese. This … Quarantine school, distance learning, distress schooling – whatever label whoever wants to place on it is an opportunity if we take it.
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