I've been both nervous and excited about Bunny being homeschooled. I've thought about how to schedule time to teach individually vs. together, what subject areas to cover that would interest them both, how to incorporate my work hours, how to keep them from bickering, etc. I'm glad we had this week to transition to just being together for so many more hours of the day. I wish I could say it all went smoothly, but she ended up having tantrums 4 out of the 5 weekdays this week.
So what did the kids do this week?
We started each day with a Bible devotional on Jesus' crucifixion from "Old Story New" 10-Minute Family Devotional book.
On the Skrafty Minecraft server, we found they were offering a free Holy Week course. We've never tried a Skrafty Minecraft course, but since it was free, the kids thought it would be fun to try it. There were Lessons for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, good Friday, and Resurrection Day. Each lesson had a Minecraft building project, and they had a great time (albeit, argument-prone) building the Palm Sunday scene and the Upper Room, and the 3 crosses. With them both sharing one account, the arguments were many! They enjoyed it though, so we may look into paid lessons in the future.
We also had our first day of co-op! It's nice to connect with a homeschool group finally! I hadn't pursued joining a co-op the first year because Monkey is happy being at home and doesn't really seek new friendships, but with Bunny home now, I knew she (being an extrovert) would need friends and regular contact with other kids her age. The co-op meets twice a month, which works out nicely because then I don't have to take as much time off work. I was thankful to meet some other local homeschooling moms and they were all very welcoming and friendly. The co-op has different subjects per trimester, and this trimester is music, plus they always have an hour of gym. I think it will be a nice addition to our routine.
We've also started doing a rotation of having each child taking turns to help me with the dinner prep. Surprisingly, it's working out pretty well! This week, it involved mostly chopping vegetables and mixing batter, but as they get more familiar with the kitchen duties, I hope we'll be able to add some cooking.
One of the nice things about having Bunny out of school now, is more time for family video time! Our kids don't watch much of anything usually(no TV, rarely any movies), and when there is something we want to watch, we always wanted both kids to be able to watch together, and with Bunny in school, plus homework time and activity time, we didn't have much time for movies. But this week we watched "Mary Poppins" and a "Brain Games" episode on Attention/Multitasking. They loved both!
Besides all that, Bunny read a LOT:
- "Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep" (Gail Carson Levine)
- "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon" (Grace Lin)
- An "Encyclopedia Brown" book (Donald Sobol)-don't remember which one she read
- "Mary Poppins" (P.L. Travers)
Monkey read 2 comic books of a Japanese cartoon character called "Hamtaro" and has been listening to Fellowship of the Ring read aloud by Dad. He's not much of a reader and definitely prefers being read to. I also began reading "The Jungle Book" to them out loud, as a precursor to our Zoology science unit that we will start next week.
Overall, a pretty good week, and I think maybe we will try to incorporate an unschooling week every month or so. Every other week (my original idea from a few weeks ago) seems a bit too much, but I do love that they actually do end up learning things(we did a bit of math when I had a %-off coupon, we addressed some envelopes for letters going out, we planted some flower and vegetable seeds), while I get a break from planning.
This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip, Homeschool Moms
This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip, Homeschool Moms
