Yay! The semester is over and I survived!
November and December summary will be short on summary and pics. We all retreated upstairs to work on our dining room table because it’s so cold downstairs. That threw off all our routine. We keep having to move things to the sofa to eat our meals. There’s no place to sit when guests come over. BUT! The amazing thing is, we ended the semester with Thumper finishing all of her work on her work plan, all by herself, for two days, before we went on Christmas break.
Really I feel like this month is more about me reflecting on all the things I learned this semester about homeschooling and being a teacher. It feels like homeschooling is just slowly coming together. I’m slowly getting how it needs to work for me.
I think the biggest thing for Thumper is really, as I said, her easing into the whole routine of doing work during work period. And outside of work, doing her chores without much reminding from me. I actually consider this her biggest accomplishment for this semester, rather than whatever knowledge she’s learned. She seemed to have gone through a growth spurt recently (what with eating 2 bowls every meal) and is now suddenly at this much more independent stage. She cooks herself breakfast and sometimes lunch, she preps for her school day, she feeds the cat, all without me nagging most days.
As for Astroboy, he lost interest in school as the semester progressed and I’ve been letting him go a bit. I think the days are long for him and he’s not getting enough outside play. He plays with different kids 4 days out of the week actually. But something’s missing that I need to work on next semester. His biggest accomplishment was sewing his stocking. I re-learned that to entice children I need to find the appropriate task to spark their interest.
- Language: We’ve now progressed to Little Bear and Frog and Toad level types of books. Writing with Ease Week 19. She finished Magic Treehouse 1-30, Rainbow Fairy series, and other random books from Oakland Asian library. Listened to Adventures of Edward Tulane on ximalaya.com
- Math: Finished multiplication memorization and is now using Reflex Math. She’s about half way done. She’s moving onto doing multiplication without concrete material (4×2 digit) and starting to do multiplication the way it’s traditionally taught, by carrying in your head (2×1 digit).
- Science: Field trip to Hayward Regional Shoreline to look at birds, listened to Radio Lab (staph, concrete, mold), Properties of water (warm water floats up, fishing for ice by adding salt, water buoyancy). Watched a lot of 生活裡的科學
- History: Personal timeline.
- Art/Practical Life: Ceramics (pumpkins and wind chime), crochet a scarf, sewed a Christmas stocking, some My Little Pony ears.
- Music: A song from 我的少女時代
- Language: He’s almost reading very smoothly regular picture books. Listened to 十四隻老鼠 Finished zhuyin class.
- Math: skip counting 3, Addition/subtraction 4 digits, learning how to exchange and carry. Subtraction memorization
- Science: same as his sister, less the Radio Lab.
- History: “Kind of” working on his personal timeline
- Art/Practical Life: Sewed his own name for practice. Sewed a Christmas stocking. Starting to learn the steps for folding laundry.
- Music: Learning some christmas songs.
