We started our ’22-’23 school year! It was a taper week for me before the Vermont Overland, so I had a little bit of brainspace to devote to school. I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of hands-on learning we’d be doing, but the kids were delighted, and starting a new routine has been a great reset for us all.
Charles’s first unit this year is Interdependence. Last week, we studied soil:
What is it made out of?
How much water does each type of material hold?
What combinations of soil components help plants grow the best?
We also started a soil ecosystem — this morning, we can really see how the roots are growing!
After studying soil, we moved on to plants. Many of the experiments were repeats of things we did at the end of our plant unit last year, which saved me some work. Charles did make a super fun mobile of plant parts — as usual, there was a whole story to go along with it, all about a squirrel stealing nuts from the plant!
This year’s Language Arts and History has a *lot* more reading and writing. Charles finally came up against vocabulary words he didn’t know, which gave us an opportunity to practice the dictionary skills we were working on last spring.
One thing I really like about Moving Beyond the Page so far is the way it incorporates technology. Before he started reading Little House in the Big Woods, we did a little bit of internet research on Wisconsin. It wasn’t a long time on the iPad, but it gave him a chance to do some independent internet work, which I haven’t been sure how to incorporate into our curriculum before.
Math picked up right where we left off, even though we are using a new curriculum. We had fun with some hands on activities building and manipulating 4-digit numbers:
Theo’s year kicked off with a unit on Community. We talked about important places and people in a community, and the kids really enjoyed building their own community map:
Then, we talked about wants and needs, and how these are met within a community. Theo’s answers made me laugh!!!
We’re working hard with Theo to get him comfortable writing; he’s very worried about spelling things right, so I’m doing a lot of cheerleading about sounding things out and not worrying about perfection. We talked last night about how the only place we worry about correct spelling is when we’re working specifically ON spelling. It’s hard for kids who like to be “right” all the time!
Theo’s math curriculum started with some lessons on patterns. It was nice to have both boys working on this — it reinforced the skip-counting skill that feeds into multiplication, which Charles’s previous math curriculum (and me…whoops) didn’t focus on particularly well.
I showed Charles how to use a ruler to make straight lines on his maps, and he took off. I have loved, this week, that the boys have participated in each other’s work. They’re both so creative in different ways; their end results are always richer when they’ve collaborated. That said, Theo and I got to curl up and read together — he read aloud to me! — and Charles and I had some side-by-side drawing time; those one-on-one times are important, too!!
This week, we add soccer into our mix, and then piano. Karate is a constant, but I’ve had to shuffle the schedule. We’ll see how all of us absorb the increase in activities! I’m glad we jumped into the school year on a week we didn’t have other demands on our time.