An Update on Homeschooling

Noah wrote himself off school yesterday on his calendar. He phonetically spelled out No Skool...it was too cute.


yes...homeschooling seems to be working out much better. He is more successful.....his behavior is a lot better though he still has moments. He has more freedom to do things he NEEDS to do in order to complete assignments such as move around more if needed......make noises..etc. though we are even trying to teach him to be quiet during class work time. He does pretty well. Had 2 tests today...a math test and spelling test...he got A's on both. Math he missed 1...spelling none. NO..we did NOT help him.

He starts his day with CHOICE time...as he seemed to like that so well in school. Then he does music and movement where he does sing-a-long songs that have catchy phrases and lyrics and words and MOVEMENTS. They are tied in with him learning his LONG and SHORT vowels.

Then he does math and language arts, he has reading time.....writing etc. All the basics....then he gets to work on arts and crafts stuff....and Tuesdays is music....Wed. is science and Thursdays is social studies. Friday is more of a free day as we run around more then.

He is working on music now playing his piano...learning the notes and where they are on the keyboard. The big full size Casio keyboard I got him for Christmas. He has been working on planting seeds and watching them grow and change for his science project. Next will be seasons.......he is learning about his neighborhood.....and he tracks weather on a graph for our area to see how temperatures change every day. He also sits at the computer and looks for other cities and compares their temperatures. SO that is all kind of connected. Summer he will learn about the Flag and Betsy Ross and Declaration of Independence...etc. He will also learn about the zoo and animals......and beaches and sand and the animals with that. I am going to have him work on dioramas. In the fall we will tackle the human body.....the major organs....how they work....etc.

Meanwhile he is also working on Bible studies.....we are working on the story of Creation and that ties in with spring. Next will be Noah's Ark probably...not sure. We have many good ones to choose from and he enjoys them all. We read from his Bible every night and he really likes that. We tie it in to movies when we can.

I am also working on social stories with him when I can...and teaching him appropriate behaviors and to recognize emotions and people's reactions and how their faces look. That is a bit tougher and more time consuming but he is making progress and has learned a lot. He has a long way to go though.

I am going to have him work on a map of OUR neighborhood too.....so he can learn where everything important is...he pretty much knows already. We will go around and take pictures of different places...and have them developed...cut them out and make a map showing where things are or what is in his neighborhood. Or he can draw them out..or us the PC to make one. He loves maps.

SO we are going to go get him a desk. We got the chair already but they had no desks down from the top level in stock till the forklift got back so we need to go back and get that. He will soon go out and plant more seeds/bulbs in pots on the balcony and watch them grow. We took pictures of his sunflower seeds as they have been growing to document and make a book. We try to have him do coloring, cutting or pasting everyday if we can. He has been reading from his Dick and Jane books and loves to do that. He can sound out most all words on his own.

This morning we worked on states and their capitals. AND their abbreviations. He loves that.

SO it is going well and he gets a lot more done than he ever did during school. We had a field trip the other day to Krispy Kreme donuts to see how they made them. We will take a field trip to the zoo this summer and Museum of Natural History maybe too or in the fall. Denver Botanical Gardens will be nice to do soon as that is along with what we are already doing. The Butterfly Pavilion is another scheduled SPRING trip as I want to teach him about butterflies and how they grow (as it is spring). We are getting the hang of it all and love teaching him and planning out schedules and watching him soak everything up. Keith does speech therapy with him since he went to school for Speech Therapy.

So.....that is a lot but we are doing it all and then some.