Homeschool: Week 1

My intent was to do lessons on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.  As Monday was Labor Day, we started school on Wednesday.  Tuesday I spent time making the room we are using look a bit more like a classroom.  At some point I'll have a picture, but until then let me describe it in approximately 1000 words.  We transformed our office into the classroom.  This wasn't a huge transition as up until then we had used the office as a catch all for junk mail, purchases from stores, miscellaneous material we have moved with us three times, overflow guests, and anything else that doesn't have an allotted space and doesn't fit in a closet.  We broke down the twin bed.  I went through years of cards that had accumulated on the floor in order to determine which ones to keep and which ones to toss.  I kept most of the cards with messages written.  Those with just a signature got tossed.  Why I had one from our insurance guy, I'm not sure.  Maybe I liked the picture at one point.  I will say it was a pleasant walk down memory lane.

I then moved to the bookcase.  It was crowded with books that have very little chance of being read.  Several are currently sitting in a donate pile, several are cleverly arranged on another book shelf, and several more are in a bunch of cardboard boxes that will undoubtedly move with us several more times until the Smithsonian requests them for an exhibit.  After all this maneuvering, I had an empty bookcase that I was able to fill in an attractive way that I knew the boys would appreciate.  And I am SURE it will look the same at the end of a week.

On the walls we have a whiteboard and a bulletin board.  I also made a little reading nook with the comforter and pillows from the twin bed.  The whiteboard gets the most use.  Not only during class.  I will often find William drawing on it.  "Mommy, look what I drew!" "What is it?" "I don't know!"

On Wednesday we had our first lessons.  Dom and Will loved the classes.  My original thought had been to do them while Molly was napping.  Naturally, Molly had other ideas.  Instead, she became my teaching assistant.  The biggest breakthroughs were that the boys officially learned their last name, Dom is a whiz at writing the letter "A" and "OHIO", and Molly isn't a very good assistant.  I planned to only do about an hour worth of activities, but between Molly's "helping" and other unforeseen occurrences, we ended up doing about 2 and a half hours.  We didn't even get to everything I wanted to do, so I've since switched my plan to focusing on  letters and numbers Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Art Projects and Science Experiments on Tuesday and Thursday.

Let me close with the science experiment we did on Thursday.  I leafed through a science workbook and came across an experiment in which I conveniently had all of the ingredients.  I took the boys down to the kitchen and got out a bowl, cornstarch, 1/2 cup water, and blue food dye.  The boys mixed all of this together.  Dom wasn't too excited by the mixture, Will enjoyed putting his fingers in it.  I wasn't impressed, but I figured it was something to do.  We messed around with it for maybe 3 minutes, but it basically just looked like blue soup.  I tried to show the boys the difference between dry cornstarch and the the liquid, but no one really cared.  I left out the bowl so that Eric could see the goop we had made.  When I got back from swimming lessons that night, I noticed it had solidified a bit more, but I didn't think too much about it as we had a friend over for supper.  Later still as I was talking on the phone, I just started to play around with it.  It was incredible.  As you squeezed it, it almost felt dry, but then it would liquify again as soon as pressure relaxed.  It really blew my mind.  I spent the next couple of hours just playing with it.  Our friend gave me some tips on what to do with it, and I look forward to doing the experiment again with the boys. . .now that I know what to expect!

Oh and for those observant ones, we did not do lessons on Friday as we all took naps.  We covered a little bit this morning.  Saturday school...Dom's idea.