Learning Log

In Fellowship of the Ring we have just arrived at Lothlorien. I read some Poe from the Poetry for Young People series, just because it is October and Kieron had some EA Poe poems to read for his literature class -- Paddy was quite interested.

Kieron was sick today and didn't really get out of bed much. On the bright side, several of his subjects today happened to be "Your Choice" which means a chance to catch-up, extend or review. So I gave him some books to read -- Mystery of the Periodic Table and another I can't remember right now -- and we reviewed the chapter of Algebra.

So, as for Paddy:

First, for science, I changed the planned experiment (melting ice cream, which we didn't have) to one that involved putting ice cubes in the fire. Fun! We got to see all three states of water at once. I got a narration from him by asking him questions based on the ones for science investigations in The Well Trained Mind. I'm going to show him how I melt butter and chocolate some time in the future since he was a bit vague on how things that are solid at room temperature can become liquid. Much clearer on frozen things like ice and ice cream.

For math, we are still working on fact families. We rolled a dice and then wrote down all the facts associated with the dice saying 5 and 6. I think he mostly gets it so we are done for now, but I'm listing a bunch of links for review in the future:

• Number Family Activities
• Fact Families
• Using Fact Family Mats
• Lesson Plan with downloadables -- It's a Fact!
• Some more
• Online Game using fact families

For phonics, there was a worksheet based on sound sorting. It's not unlike the Montessori game of sorting. I just made up my own worksheet by drawing boxes and then asked him to listen for the final consonants. This was hard for him but sorting them by how they look is too easy. By the way, here's a cute homeschooling blog entry with several phonics games shown. And here's a large database of pictures sorted by sound that are free to use.

• Here's a page on ending blends (games and worksheets) which is what we're doing right now.
• Printable resources for ending blends
• Phonics worksheets

Grammar was about singular and plural nouns, an easy concept for 6 year olds. The only difficulty is the terminology "singular" and "plural" and I think we will try to reinforce that in future. I found a few games of varying difficulty and silliness.

• Quia -- Singular and Plural nouns matching game.
• Noun Dunk -- basically, about common vs proper nouns, a bit ahead of where he is. Silly graphics.
  
• A simple quiz where you type in the plural forms of nouns. Might be useful for his spelling practice.
• A Balloon Noun Game -- you burst the balloons that are labelled with nouns.
  

Then we read a LOT. We finished Now We are Six. He has loved this book, and I love it too. I hope to read it to him again at least once before he is no longer Six. We reread the first book in the Junior Great Books. ... it contained two tales called The Black Hen and The Mouse and the Wizard, and several poems. We discussed some of the questions a little. Then he was supposed to do his own little composition based on one of the poems in the book, called "Flying". He seemed to like this (I wrote down the composition for him).

We also tried to play a music game where you shine a flashlight higher or lower and sing higher or lower. This was not an entire success. Partly because my singing voice is gone because of my cold and partly because I am not in tune (ha ha!) with the way the beginner's music program looks. I like it in principle (it uses the Solfege method recommended by Charlotte Mason! -- here is an explanation and here are some visuals). I like the content, but the interface is harder for me to suit to my own style than are most of the other courses.

He loves the songbook -- I read him the songs as chants. I heard him chanting some of them later on. And the program also has a music appreciation component with a CD of good classical music. So I'm hoping in the long run to get in the swing of this (ha, ha, again, I'm not doing this
on purpose, really).

Lastly, for cursive, he practiced relations of "c" -- a, d, and g. Tomorrow I'll see how he does without models to trace. My guess is he still needs more time.

Tomorrow will be an Art and History day. He is halfway through the lesson on the Nile. He isn't much into coloring but I want him to color the map of the Nile that they gave us. It looks a bit like this. We went through this quiz on Ancient Egypt today.

I found this Ancient Egypt unit at a blog, and Mr Donn's Ancient Egypt page. More than I will ever, ever use, but I wanted to list them. Oh, and Egyptian Tales over here -- not necessarily childrens' tales but might be interesting.