In Our Homeschool This Week (6th Grade & Preschool | 17 Feb 23)

Preschool has escalated rapidly this week. You’d think I would have seen this coming, but still Lochlan’s eagerness has caught me by surprise.

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At this point, the academic portion of Lochlan’s preschool looks like this —

• Evan-Moor’s Everyday Literacy: PreK Math
• Evan-Moor’s Everyday Literacy: PreK Science
• Evan-Moor’s Everyday Literacy: PreK Listening & Speaking
• Evan-Moor’s Everyday Literacy: PreK Reading & Writing
• Selected worksheets from Twinkl

(Now through February 20, you can get 30% off all Evan-Moor ebooks with code PRESIDENTS23. The ebook Teacher’s Editions of the Everyday Literacy books contain all the printable student worksheets!)

I incorporate a lot of hands-on activities as well, like using counters for number sense. We do school when he asks (which is every morning after breakfast) and most days, when we finish the Evan-Moor books (which only take 5-15 min per book), he says

“More! Lots! Print me more soo-ull sheets, ‘ama! Not coloring pages. SOO-ULL! Tell me instructions.”

Child-led is still child-led, even when it looks a little different than you expect. ;) But don’t worry; the non-academic portion includes all the things people are concerned I’ll leave out once a child asks to learn letters —

• reading aloud,
• nursery rhymes,
• Bible stories,
• playdough,
• stick puppets,
• color-matching games,
• duplo trains,
• getting muddy outside ,
• jumping off the couch,
• playing pretend,
• roaring,
• singing,
• water beads,
• flushing the toilet,
• filling pockets and dump trucks with rocks,
• et cetera ad infinitum.

There are a lot of hours in each day — more than enough to include both playing with wild abandon and doing “soo-ull.”

Let’s see what else has happened in our homeschool this week —

Literature

For every chapter of The Call of the Wild Aveline reads for Liberal Arts at St. Raphael School, she’s re-writing it in the style of an old-timey diary, written from the canine paw-spective of Buck. It’s really helping her get through what has been a difficult book for her. (Does anyone actually like Jack London?)

Also this week, Aveline read a thick stack of books for fun:

• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma,
• Ruby Redfort: Catch Your Death, and
• Henry and the Chalk Dragon

Just a cool 1,108 pages, nbd.

And this week I’ve (re)read Roger Steer’s excellent George Müller from the out-of-print Heroes of the Cross series, and Waka T. Brown’s debut middle-grade memoir While I Was Away. (Thank you, Rachel from Seven in All, for the absolutely stellar recommendation.) If you’re a language learner, a third-culture kid, a child of immigrants, While I Was Away will especially hit you in the feels. It’s so thought-provoking! Definitely having Aveline read it next, then sticking a map pin in Japan as we track our learning geographically.

I’m done with this month’s co-op read, Dumpling Days (I always re-read our co-op books the books they’re assigned.) Aveline, though, is forcing herself to ration it into the weekly reading segments as scheduled for co-op discussion. It’s taking a tremendous amount of self-control.

I also discovered author Kao Kalia Yang of The Late Homecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir wrote this new picture book: From the Tops of Trees. It’s very moving; I recommend.

I don’t always make time to read for myself. I tend to come downstairs after putting kids to bed and clean, or work on the computer. But I’m trying to make an intentional shift in 2023 to slower living and less perfectionism. (This series is a part of that.)

Language Arts

Since Liberal Arts was heavier on the writing this week, we skipped Writing & Rhetoric and focused in grammar with Classical Academic Press’ Well-Ordered Language instead.

Math

I “caught” Aveline with a notebook, working through problems from a geometry textbook when she was supposed to be cleaning her room. (Yes, I know. It’s not actually a problem.) She also finished the chapter on inequalities, compound inequalities, and absolute value in The Critical Thinking Company’s Understanding Algebra I, and worked through a little Problem Solving Genius, too.

Chinese

Chinese continues to take up a massive part of our day, time-wise. I’d estimate one and a half to two hours per day are spent in some sort of Chinese language pursuit. (And this is not counting time spent on Greek language study.) This week Chinese study involved translating the next chapter of A Brief History of China for Teenagers, completing a lesson from a set of books published by Marshall Cavendish and intended for kids in Singapore, and the usual Chinese school homework of reading, writing, and flashcards. Oh, and this adorable Year of the Rabbit paper craft!

History

We’re loosely working through British history, but stopping for a lot of rabbit trails. It’s a gap year in history for us, so we have the freedom to follow any sort of curiosities we want. This week, we stopped for

• The Quest for Z: The True Story of Explorer Percy Fawcett and a Lost City in the Amazon by Greg Pizzoli

From an art perspective, this book is so attracive. A note at the end explains the illustrations were “made using silkscreen, photographic halftones, Zipatone, photocopy machines, newspapers, cut paper, and Photoshop.”

Oh, and Aveline wants to let you know it has a very surprising ending.

She also read

• The Great Wall Through Time: A 2,700-Year Journey Along the World’s Greatest Wall, illustrated by Du Fei, based on an original manuscript by Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, translated by Wu Qi and retold by Edward Aves

This is a brand-new book, published in English in 2022. It’s very visually appealing, with a wide format and illustrations which spread 28″ wide when the book is opened.

Science

I don’t love Apologia’s Physical Science. (There, I said it.) I loved their K-6 Young Explorers series (see my reviews here and here), so it never even crossed my mind I would dislike Physical Science. But honestly? This book is kind of a hot mess. And it wasn’t cheap. Twinkl content is honestly so much better.

And on that note, ha! That about wraps up this week. Next week is winter break, so there may be a brief pause in programming here (although I’ll be back during break with a review of these pencils from this Timberdoodle package.)

Leave me a comment and let me know something you’re loving this week in your homeschool! And if you missed last week’s recap, you can catch up, too.