Homeschool Curriculum: What We Are Learning Week 3 (and Solutions for Hands-on Learners)

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I am a checklist person- especially with our homeschool curriculum.

Each day we do not get each item done on the list for that day. I am learning to be ok with carry over.

My boys are still adjusting to all of the reading that is involved in the curriculum and in turn I have been on the hunt for some solutions that will keep their busy little hands moving. The Sonlight forums have been a lifesaver for asking questions and obtaining some ideas and solutions from moms who have experience under their belts.

Our day always starts with Bible. As you can see here, this is what a week of Bible reading looks like.

We read 2-4 pages each day from the Story Bible. There are pictures so that helps a bit.

I am reading this aloud to them, but still they want something to do with their hands.

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As I shared last week, there is a website that Sonlight references in a cd that came with my curriculum. The cd shares pointers and suggestions for each week and references websites for obtaining additional information.

I go to the easy to navigate website and find color sheets (with or without verbiage) that go with our Bible lesson. They enjoy the color sheets and the process helps them comprehend the content even more.

Here is Nick’s color page about Lot and Abraham.

With that said, they do want some other activities to do.

I have heard more than once, we have to color again?

For that reason, I am in the process of putting together a box of hands on activities that Nick and Luke can use during Bible, History and Geography, Science and other read aloud times. I am trying to use items we already have at home or things that I can inexpensively grab at Target or the dollar store.   One of the items in our box is Playdoh.

One way I have used the Playdoh during our Bible reading time is to have them create something that represents what I am reading or something we have recently read about from the Bible.

Nick made a cave to represent where Sarah, Isaac’s mom, was buried when she passed away at the age of 127.

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Luke created the Earth and the sun with his Playdoh. Our Bible readings give lots of detail about the moon and sun and day and night as the people travel by foot or camel.

(I ask them to use a paper plate when creating so we can keep the tablecloth clean. They don’t always keep it on the plate but for the most part they do. We reuse the plates over and over to cut down on waste.)

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Another thing we are struggling with is each child getting their work done at a different pace.

Nick is very neat and orderly about his work. He takes his time because he wants it done right.

Luke is fast and wants to be done first. He is eager for the next set of directions and seems to always be waiting. And waiting. And complaining that he is waiting and that the homeschool fireworks are not exploding in the air eagerly waiting to entertain him. In turn, his work is not always neat.

One solution we have come up with to encourage neat work, keep them motivated, and keep waiting hands busy is giving a stamp for good work.

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I have grape smelly ink that I bought a long time ago and a set of You Did It, Great Job, Neat Work, etc., stamps. I let them stamp their own work as we complete a page or a section and we have checked it to ensure it is correct.

In this case, I had to ask Luke to erase his sloppy work, as you can see. He doodles too, but I am ok with that. His father is the same way- a doodler. He does get tired of the repeated busy work like tracing the same numbers over and over again. Nick does too. So I use my judgement and when I see they obviously know how to write the number four, we stop tracing and writing over and over again. Because honestly, there is more tracing and writing tomorrow. They will get the chance to write the number four again and again.

Hope some of these suggestions help you as well and give you a nice glimpse into our homeschool day.

With that said, here is an overview of what we are learning this week.

Homeschooling Week 3:

Memory Work: Colossians 3:20

Bible: The Patriarchs (Abraham, Issac, Esau, Jacob, Rebekah and Sarah)

History: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome

Geography: Egypt, Greece, The Roman Empire

Letter of the Week: M m

Creative Expression: Imagination

Science: Earth/day and night/seasons/tadpoles and frogs

My boys love Science, but I am still searching for ways to keep them entertained with more hands on experiments. Pinterest to the rescue!

Math: tally marks/match tally marks to numbers/right, left, first and last, top and bottom/read a bar graph/1-5 tracing/count objects 1-15/ recognize pennies (front and back)/ colors: red,blue, yellow/shapes: star, square, triangle

5 Comments

  1. Juliette Ayot says:

    Home schooling seems really wonderful and interesting. My gosh you have taught them so much just within these 3 weeks and it seems that they are also quite interested. All the thumps up for you to take up a creative turn. I gotta learn a lot from you. 😉

    1. Juliette, thank you so much for your sweet words.
      If it were not for the Sonlight forum, friends who homeschool, homeschool blogs and Pinterest boards, I think I would be stuck. 🙂
      Thanks for following our journey.

  2. Kim Idell says:

    I love the idea of using Playdough. I had not thought of that. I think Skylar (8 year old) would enjoy that.
    Doodling……all 3 of my kids draw all over their worksheets. Sometimes they spend more time on that than the actual worksheet. 🙂

  3. Karen Bailey says:

    Hi there, I find your posts about your homeschooling very interesting as I am thinking of homeschooling for my 3 boys. One question I have for you is how do your boys handle all the different topics that are covered in week and how much depth does the curriculum go into?

    I’m not sure how old your boys are, but my eldest is 6 and just completed his first 12 months at school. At his school, they cover the usual reading, spelling, maths etc but the history and geography type topics are split into unit studies. For example, this term they have studied dinosaurs and volcanoes.

    I was wondering how your boys were coping with things like ancient Rome and Greece etc. They just seem very young to be covering such a lot of work. You also said that homeschooling is taking 3- 5 hours per day, yet I have read that under 7 year olds only need about 2 hours of individual learning.

    How are you finding their attention spans out during the course of the day? My final question was with regards to the cost. How much does the Sonlight program cost you verus public school? I would apprecriate your thoughts.

    thanks

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