As most of you know, I have three boys. Three busy, active, all boy - boys. Therefore, P.E. is a VERY important part of our school day. It is a big benefit of homeschooling for our family. When I start to see my boys "zone out," we take a break. Go outside. Ride bikes, run to the stop sign and back (we live at the bottom of a cul de sac so we are lucky to have very little traffic), play basketball, play kickpen (or some peole call it kickball), throw the baseball, kick the soccer ball, and they always love a good ole game of tackle football. I've never set aside a specific time of our day for p.e. I have no doubt that we get above and beyond the required time, but I've often wondered how other homeschool parents "do" p.e. I've seen the books, but never bought one. What do you do at your house? Here's some pictures of us doing our "p.e."
Let's see. . . I'm pretty sure we did some academic stuff this week, too. Of course, we did the basics. The bigger boys are working on writing a friendly letter in grammar. It just cracked me up because D decided that he wanted to write his letter to our neighbor, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Well, first he wanted to write it to our dog, Enoch. However, when he figured out that we were actually going to mail the letter, he realized that wouldn't work out so well. So, sorry grandmas, Mr. Fitzpatrick is getting the letter. Maybe he will change his mind during the revising and proofreading steps!
I mentioned last week, that the boys were going to start reading The Courage of Sarah Noble. I wasn't sure how they would like it, but they seem to think it is okay. I guess it earned some "coolness" points because it is based on a true story. It is hard to not dig the story of a little 8 year old girl (same age as my boys) that traveled into the New England wilderness with her father in 1707 to cook for him and help him get their new house built and settled. Next up on their reading list is The Matchlock Gun.
Science didn't involve any experiments this week, but we made up for it in History. We talked about The Lost Colony of Roanoke and made our own guesses as to what happened to the settlers. We talked about Jamestown, Captain John Smith, and Pocahontas. We spent a lot of time on the life of a colonists. Here the boys colored and cut out clothes that a colonial man would have worn. They got a good laugh at some of his clothes.
(So, maybe D got a little bit colorful with his clothing!)
We also talked about the homes in colonial America. This was a cute idea from History Pockets.
We even gave writing with quills a chance. I didn't have any ink on hand (not that we would have used it if I had, but you know) so we just used some washable paint. Either way, I think the kids appreciate their pencils, pens, markers, and crayons a little bit more!
We ended the week talking about the pilgrims' voyage to America on The Mayflower. Our info said that the Mayflower was about 90 ft. long. That seemed pretty big, so we went out into our cul de sac to see just how big that was.
It didn't really seem so big once we started talking about 102 passengers, scurvy, and no real bathrooms. A whole new respect. I'm just sayin'!
What have y'all been up to this week?
Wow. I never thought about how small 90 feet is for that many people! What history curriculum do you use?
ReplyDeleteAs for PE, my girls do yoga at co-op and yoga with me, they ride their bikes, we go to the playground, they took tennis lessons when the weather was warmer. In NJ we don't have any requirements, per se, but I feel that they are active enough.
Hey Theresa!
ReplyDeleteI had never really considered it either! We use Sonlight. We are doing Core 3 this year. We love it!