November and December 2020 Homeschooling Highlights of Ian and Nereus

Ian’s Science Highlights

Ian made a model of earth and it’s interior, he even made a moon model to go with it.

He was so serious about his task because he loves geography next to stars and galaxies.

He also identified land and water forms on a geography book about Washington State, which was given to me by mom when she returned from US early this year.

He also studied about force using the Epic app and his My Pals science book.

Ian’s Art Projects

‘Coz nothing stirs the heart and mind like art.

Ian made an ancient sea during dinosaur age by sketching a scene with watercolor and adding different aquatic animal stickers. So it’s actually more of a science + art, like the model of earth he made using playdough.

Ian also painted snowman for Christmas card in watercolor using the tutorial from “Let’s Make Art” channel at Youtube.

We did another Christmas theme watercolor painting this time a buggy with gifts on its back.

Ian’s Sibika Highlights

He learned how to estimate the percentage of water versus land using grid system. He drew relatively similar sized squares over continents and islands and ocean on a world map and from there we counted the squares and did area estimates. He enjoyed this lesson very much!

Studied land forms and water forms for Sibika as well.

I bought STEM toys for my two boys because I’ve seen how they enjoyed assembling legos into various structures and cars. So far, they have been able to assemble race car, glider, solar powered car, and recently, elevator (see video below).

My two boys playing with their newly build elevator.

For music, we continued our piano lessons with Teacher Cel. I’m just proud that Ian composed two new pieces (see videos below). I had considered his piano compositions as his entry for quarterly exam in Music.

Ian composed a piano piece he called Dark Forest.

Nereus’ Homeschooling Highlights

Ian and Nereus took their quarterly exam on the last week of November. After the exam, we decided that we’d do minimal homeschooling activities this month as part of their Christmas break. The pandemic has been tough on both of them, being still minors and not allowed to go out of our compound. So I decided to cut them some slack this month and let them play, swim, and read books. They are also allowed to play on their table on a limited timer per day.

Nereus and Ian took their second quarterly exam on the last week of November.

Nereus continued studying his Christmas piano piece, Carol of the Bells.

They did a few writing exercises…

as well as practice pieces on the keyboard.

Nereus is currently using CODE MONKEY to learn basic programming. He enjoyed using it. We plan
to renew our subscription next year for them to continue coding lessons but only for as long as they are willing to do it. I feel that I should not force them to do something unless they’re enjoying it. His little brother also tried his hands on the easy activities. The love best the part where they get to solve puzzles while they had a hard time constructing a game. But for it’s okay. Programming is something that I find too advance for them anyway. 🙂

We are lucky that the swimming pool finally reopened after being closed due to enhanced community quarantine for months. They hit the pool as soon as it opened. Swimming is one of the activities that they can now include as their PE activity.

Friday is Art and Reading Day for both of them. We did mostly watercolor paintings the past weeks. I love that Nereus helped his little brother a lot in those activities.

The kids also helped out in simple household chores such as tending to the plants, cleaning our hard hats (an important tool for our earthquake readiness kit), sweeping the floor, fixing the bed, and washing the dishes. For our newly aquired plants, we potted them using jars and containers that we could reuse. They are aware that when these plastic containers are thrown, they would just land in the oceans and hurt marine animals. They’ve seen videos of that on Youtube so they are aware of how plastics should be reused and upcycled as much as possible. We also use grow lights for some of our plants especially when the sky is overcast for days.

I’ve also asked Nereus to write a lot the past weeks. Writing activities he did include summaries or reviews of books he’s read; instructional article on how to grow plants hydroponically based on his experience with growing his first batch of lettuce (photo in the center, above) as well as explain concepts in Science and History. Even his exams (prepared by me) had plenty of questions that had to be explained in short essay. Nereus is great in vocabulary – I wanted to develop this skill through frequent reading and writing. I’m happy he was okay with it.

So there you have it. These are my kids’ homeschooling highlights for November and December. We still did academic stuff but I wanted to include only the fun activities they did for the two months in this article.

Thank you for reading this far. 🙂