January 2021 Homeschooling Highlights

Ian’s First Week

1. Studied about circuits and magnets. He also participated in his older brother’s experiment on Reversible vs Irreversible Reaction which involved burning sugar, butter, and candle wax, as well as, dissolving flour and baking soda in water and vinegar, respectively. Ian also read about how earth changes due to natural disasters such as volcanic eruption, floods, and landslides.
2. For Math, he has started doing addition and subtraction of whole tens as well as rules in rounding off numbers.
3. For English, he read the story, “My Daddy Long Legs” and encircled and underlined the verbs and adjectives, respectively, as part of review of last month’s lessons.
4. For Filipino, he read, “Ang Alamat ng Ilang Ilang” which is a story about how the Ilang-ilang gained the friendship of other trees and creatures around her. For Wikahon, he read and answered the questions related to the story, “Ang Salakot ni Lolo Ambo”.
5. For Sibika, Ian studied about “Sining ng Ating Komunidad” which highlighted “kundiman”, “panitikan”, and “sayaw”. To help him understand better, we had him watch performance of “kundiman” and folk dances such as “tinikling”, “sungkil”, and “manlalatik” on Youtube.
6. He made a birthday card for his daddy’s birthday using watercolor and Artezza art paper.
7. Ian practiced the piano pieces he studied in November and December prior to Christmas break.

Nereus’ First Week

1. Nereus studied ratio and proportion problems using bar/block model and solve some word problems on his Math Mammoth book.
2. He has rewritten a poem about a bird lifted off from his book, The Good and the Beautiful and did a watercolor painting of a bird right beside it. This was his cursive writing practice and art activity.
3. Along with his brother, Nereus also did an actual experiment about Reversible and Irreversible Reactions as previously mentioned above. He then wrote his observations on the exercise book.
4. Nereus also studied about American occupation of the Philippines as well as watched a documentary about the death of Juan Luna.
5. For Filipino, he is currently reading the school materials on “pang-abay” and “parirala” which is just a review of what he had studied in Grade 5. I find that translating to English helps him understand the terms in Filipino. He also read and answered questions about a story of Mayon oVlcano from Wikahon-B. We use Wikahon to enrich their Filipino vocabulary as well as learn about Filipino culture. Although we speak Tagalog at home, there are plenty of things from past that my kids still don’t know about.
6. Nereus also continued coding his first game at Code Monkey which he started learning last November as mentioned in our November Homeschooling Highlights.
7. For HELE, Nereus is currently studying how to grow Oxalis Triangularis also known as purple shamrock because we recently acquired roots from a friend who came all the way from Leyte. This is going to be his pet project for this quarter.
8. He continued his piano practice, albeit, on his own for the meantime that his piano teacher is on a break.

Every Friday is usually Art Day for us. But since we already did watercolor birthday cards for our daddy, we decided to make simple melt and pour soaps instead. I wrote about soap making with the kids in my previous blog post. Soap making was a single project that involves 3 subjects – HELE, science, and art. You can also add it in your history class if you’re going to discuss the history of soap making. So feel free to read the previous blog for inspiration and methods on how we did the project.

Ian’s Second Week

1. For this week, Ian learned about compound words and synonyms.
2. Ian also learned how animals camouflage on their environment to protect themselves from predators. My boys were so fascinated by the video they watched about it, I decided to let them paint animal blending in their environment. Ian painted octopus while Nereus painted sea horse.
3. Ian also read “Ang Uod” (English: The Earthworm), “Ang Damit ni Abel” (English: Abel’s Clothes”, “Ang Bangang Manunggul” (English: The Manunggul Jar), and “Ang Katutubong Makata” (English: The Native Poet). All these short stories were from Wikahon-A, our favorite collection of stories that talk about Filipino traditions, culture, art, and language. Ian also read about the famous story, “Ang Kalabaw sa Balon”, which is a story about a water buffalo who fell into a well and his owner and neighbors shoveled soil into the well so that he could escape the pit.
4. Ian also learned about the life and music of Ludwig Van Beethoven. After watching a documentary about him, Ian played “Ode to Joy” on his piano and practiced a few pieces he has been learning from his music teacher.
5. For Math, Ian’s favorite subject, he did a few problem solving and addition of double digits by column.
6. Ian continued his game sequencing activity, Banana Tails, at Code Monkey – an app that integrates programming and games. We started coding last November but we are taking it slow and ease our way into it as it can be a daunting task for them.
7. For Science, Ian participated in some of his older brother’s activities about sublimation and precipitation experiments but he also had his share of research about earth’s resources. We used Epic app and Dr. Binoc’s channel on Youtube for lessons.
8. Our art project for the week was watercolor painting of otter in water using lesson by Let’s Make Art.

Nereus’ Second Week

1. Nereus continued taking care of our purple shamrock based on his research about the plant as part of his HELE subject. We also worked on the spreadsheet about the cost of raw materials we used for our soap making project. And the numbers don’t lie, we found out that it’s way cheaper to make soaps than buy them off the grocery shelves.
2. He continued coding his first game on Code Monkey, called the Frogger.
3. Nereus continued his lessons in Math on scaling and cross multiplication of ratios. We are taking it slow in Math because it’s his least favorite subject.
4. For history, he continued reading about the American occupation of the Philippines during WWII.
5. As part of his art and English performance task, he studied about the art works of Raphael and had prepared an artist study about him using a worksheet I got for free from iHomeschool book.
6. He also read about the birth of Lam-ang from our Wikahon box and reviewed Filipino lessons from his school provider about “pang-abay” (adverb) and “pang-uri” (adjective).
7. Both Nereus and Ian continued their lessons with Teacher Cel. Nereus is working on Menuet in G, while Ian has recently gotten a new piece to study, Waltz, aside from his previous piece from last year, Dinosaur Stomp.

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Ian’s Third Week

1. Ian has volunteered to fix the bed in the morning. I’m just proud to report that because it’s a rare thing, to be honest.
2. He chose to wear a cap and a long-sleeved shirt with his favorite shirt for his OOTD on the first day of the week because mornings have been a bit chilly lately.
3. Aside from continuing his lessons from last week, Ian and Nereus did an indoor workout inspired by Among Us – one of the games they play occasionally (video below).
4. He continued practicing his piano piece Waltz 13 and Dinosaur Stomp, under his teacher’s guidance.
5. For Filipino, Ian studied “Panghalip Panao” or pronouns and read a story about a young heroine who saved her sibling from their burning house, entitled “Ang Batang Bayani” (the young hero).
6. For Math, Ian did a few problem solving that involves two digit addition and subtraction.
7. For Science, he read about earth and space on his book – his favorite subject. He also reviewed about water cycle by reading about precipitation, evaporation, and condensation. I demonstrated this by pouring in a cold water in an empty Mason jar so he could observe it. He first learned about water cycle during our Geology Tour last year.
8. For Sibika, Ian learned about the country’s natural resources and how we can take care of them. He also read about the raw materials and byproducts we use on a daily basis that were sourced from these natural resources.
9. Both Ian and Nereus continued their coding activities at Code Monkey.
10. For art, we learned how to paint using watercolor pencils. We painted cherries using the tutorial for this by Let’s Make Art, one of our favorite Youtube channel.

Nereus’ Third Week

1. Nereus conducted a gravitational force experiment along with Ian by dropping various items after taking note of their materials and recording the time it takes for each to hit the floor from a fixed height. Nereus made a table of his data for this.
2. For Math, Nereus learned about scaling using its practical application in word problems about floor plans.
3. Like Ian, he also continued his programming activity at Code Monkey.
4. For Filipino, he read a short stories in Wikahon-B about Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), “Si Aling Carmen” and “Ang Tindahan ni Aling Cely”.
5. For English, Nereus has started reading my personal favorite book for writing, The Element of Style by Strunk and White. For this year, we plan to hone his skills in writing and I do believe reading this book is a good start.
6. Along with Ian, Nereus also did indoor exercise via a Youtube video inspired by Among Us, a game that they occasionally play on my phone.
7. Nereus has also finally finished his study and PowerPoint presentation on how to grow purple shamrock or Oxalis Triangularis plant. We acquired several rhizomes of purple shamrock from Leyte from a fellow geologist so we thought we’d study how best to take care of them.

Ian’s Fourth Week

1. Ian continued his lessons from last week in English, Filipino, and Music.
2. For Sibika, we reviewed the lesson about byproducts from the country’s natural resources and had him create a picture collage of these. What we did was cut photos off a magazine and made a collage of these by grouping them according to source: water resources, timber and plants, mined materials, and aggregates (e.g. gravel, sand, cement), as instructed from book.
3. Ian also demonstrated solar system using his playdough pots and ball as well as how the earth and moon rotates and revolves around the sun (video below). It wasn’t part of his lessons this week but he wanted to do it so I let him be.
4. They both had a chance to hit the pool this week and do indoor exercise with Keoni Tamayo, our favorite coach at Youtube for walking. Because of the pandemic, the number of people who can swim in the pool was limited to five for 3-hour slot. It’s been hard to secure a slot lately so I felt lucky that Tuesday schedule had vacant slots. The kids had a chance to play with two of their friends.
5. For art we painted eyes using the tutorial by LMA, and trees by Nianiani, two of our favorite Youtube channels for learning art as mentioned in my previous blog.

Nereus’ Fourth Week

1. Like Ian, Nereus spent the week reviewing lessons from previous week.
2. I’m happy to have caught him teaching his little brother how to tie his shoe laces while they were preparing for their indoor exercise.
3. Ian and Nereus also enjoyed watching Science videos from The Good and The Beautiful website. We all love this website, we use The Good and the Beautiful’s English books for our lessons.
4. Nereus’ purple shamrock has bloomed this week! I took a photo of him to document how successful he was in taking care of the the plant. I even told the giver of the rhizomes about this news.
5. I have also started teaching Nereus how to write short stories for his ebook. His first story was about the scary millipede (photo collage above). To prepare for this task, Nereus has been reading Strunk and White’s The Element of Style. He’s also the book, “Reason’s for Writing” course book that I got on a sale last year. Nereus is naturally a storyteller and loves reading so I though I’d help him hone his skills in writing this quarter. We plan to continue writing stories and poems for practice until next school year or even beyond.