This year, I took the plunge into homeschooling my 2nd grader Honor. I'm grateful for the chance to spend time with her and help her to continue to grow during this unusual time, with schools opening and closing periodically due to the coronavirus pandemic. And it was her idea to homeschool, so that made it much easier.Another thing that has made it easy is that we're using The Good and The Beautiful for our curriculum. As a mom of 6 kids, this really takes a load off of me to provide all of the content. But it has been fun to visit museums (of which there are a lot here in Pittsburgh) and even take a big history trip to Boston/Plymouth/Cape Cod this fall. We also took a virtual trip around the world during December which I'll blog about another time.
Today, we took a break from our regular curriculum and routine to celebrate our 100th day of school, which is not normally a day I pay much attention to, but now that I'm the one doing the teaching, I kind of get why one would use this landmark to celebrate and learn with.
For our first activity, I gave Honor this grid and asked her to find 100 ways to make 100 using addition. It was fun to see her quickly figure out the pattern. I like seeing that little light come on inside when she discovers something on her own and I know it's gratifying for her as well.
For the next activity, I gave the kids 100 plastic disposable cups and they went to town building a 100 cup tower.
Other activities included writing what we'll be doing when we turn 100....
Seeing how many things we can do in 100 seconds (such as jumping jacks, counting, abcs, sit-ups, blinks, etc.)...
and counting how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. (It took Honor 76!)
With the marking of day 100, I'm feeling good about how things are going but also wondering what will happen next year. I know Honor would love to spend all day with her friends again....once and if things get back to normal next year. So, we will see what happens.
I miss homeschooling! But I'm reaping the fruits of my labors because I have such strong relationships with all of our children. I believe you'll look back on these days as some of the best too. (I feel that the most important time to homeschool is through the middle school/junior high years--when hormones are raging and insecurities are high, being safe at home in a loving environment strengthens the child and builds a firm foundation at they transition into adulthood.) Keep up the good work Mom!
ReplyDeleteSo fun! The Carnegie science Center has phenomenal homeschooling classes. Of course that was pre-pandemic. I don’t know what they’re offering now. We have come over from Ohio to do a couple. But there are fantastic museums there to visit. We’d love to visit them all and it makes me nostalgic for my childhood. And I love sharing those with my children. I love to go to the Pittsburgh history Museum and have my children try to pack pickles in a jar.
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