Finishing Up and Continuing On

The Wright Brothers' Plane.

See model instructions here as well as complete unit with tons of info on the Wright Brothers.

South American Rivers.

Will chose a Viking name; "Will the Fast" and wrote it in Runes.

The completed Viking Helmet! RRRRR!!

Great resource and the book I used for the Viking activites can be found on Amazon here.

This week we have been finishing up projects. We are almost done talking about world rivers. For South America I had will use salt dough to make a shape of South America and add the rivers in and then painted it and put little flags on to mark the rivers; The Amazon, The Parana and The Ornoco.

He also built a model of one of Orville and Wilbur Wrights airplanes out of toothpick and an egg carton. He is almost done with reading the biography of the two brothers. He also has "invented" some new paper airplane models.

He has also continued to work on Vikings. We read a short Biography on Eric the Red and he watched a BBC biography on Eric's son Leif Ericcson's. He finished his Viking helmet and learned about Runes. He wants to dye a shirt with beets, but I haven't braved that one yet! I am hoping to find a fun way to create a Viking painting of a boat or something?? Don't know if that will happen but it has been in my mind.

This week Will also read a book of mine from when I was about his age called "No Home for Shannon" about a girl that finds a dog and how she works to keep the dog for her own. Together we are reading an abridged version of "Alice in Wonderland" and we have both laughed and found it strange. It's fun comparing it to the movie. I want to find another version of Alice for him to watch and do a 3-way Venn diagram. I am thinking too of discussing dreams and such to connect to the story.

Finally, Will has continued to work on his human body project. This week we did reproductive organs and I really thought I would get more questions from him, but I didn't and I sighed a breath of relief. I really want to pawn that whole discussion onto Dennis!!

For closet, Will has still jumped around from Core phase to Love of Learning and back and forth again. He is really trying to find things that are Love and Learning but he still really enjoys to just "play". I put together a book of projects from Disney's Family Fun magazine and he has done a few projects from there, such as building a match box car garage out of a cereal box, he has done some beginner sudoku puzzles, made paper airplanes, drawn pictures, completed some easy science experiments and read a lot. It's fun to watch him take directions and just go with very little help from me. One lesson learned that I had to step in for was liquid measuring cups vs. dry measuring cups and what specifically to use them for.

I often wonder is this really enough?? I worry he is behind in math, did he write today? Did I spend enough time? But then we have conversations about mistakes and life and I see that I am able to help him not just academically when he is home, but in life lessons that might get missed if he wasn't here with me and competing with 25-30 other children and just getting passed by or in trouble when he gets frustrated for making a mistake. I am grateful to have him home and hopefully to help him be a stronger and better person because I now have time and opportunity to see his needs more clearly and to guide and influence more directly and effectively.

Still to come this week, art project aka, valentines and park day valentine party with other home schoolers, math (I still need a small game or activity to choose) and his rec center science class. All in all I think it was a productive and good week to date.

Happy Home Schooling!