Bottled Hurricanes, Frozen Water, and Perspective

...a weekly wrap-up

 

In our homeschool this week...

Math
Before Christmas break, we switched my son's Algebra curriculum. He was doing OK, but I was beginning to hear the dreaded, "I hate math" comments. I knew we had to make a change in our approach or the curriculum. After some analysis and discussion with him, we determined we needed to change curriculum. {Typically, we do not immediately change curriculum. It is usually a last resort after we have tried to adapt or supplement our current curriculum. In this case, we determined after some trial and error that it was indeed the curriculum which needed changed.} He is now using Jacob's Elementary Algebra, and is thriving. I am glad for the change.

Science
Using Apologia's elementary science in our co-op has been wonderful. For eleven weeks, we are studying outer space using Exploring Creation with Astronomy. The children are responding well to the experiments and demonstrations. Not to mention, they are retaining a lot of information. This week, we learned about Jupiter. To demonstrate a storm atmosphere, the children made a storm in a bottle following the directions in the text (1a-1b).

Writing
My youngest daughter's writing co-op class, which I teach, is learning about who/which clauses. We use Institute for Excellence in Writing methods. All Things Fun & Fascinating has proven to be interesting to both the girls and boys in the class.

Nature Observations
We had a light snow fall on Monday night. The children found a few icicles to inspect, too (2a-2b).

Music
We are finishing a children's biography on Brahms called The Young Brahms, by Opal Wheeler. We have read several seven from this series. Each one is quite enjoyable.

Art {co-op class}
Teaching a group of middle schoolers perspective was at first a challenge. However, then I pulled out my copy of Lessons in Perspective Drawing, and it has been much easier. Today, the children drew houses using two vanishing points in their drawings.


*In case you noticed, or are beginning to wonder...Yes, I teach three classes in two different co-ops. At one co-op, I teach science to younger elementary grades. In the other co-op, I teach writing to older elementary grades and art (drawing) to middle school grades.


A helpful homeschooling thought to share is sometimes you need to assess and make some changes.

Things my children are working on include cleaning out some of their paper messes (3) and finishing some works of art. Pictured above is my son's Yoda drawing (4), which he has been working on since summer time. It is about the same size as Yoda.





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