This post will be a short one because Ian had his first quarterly exams this month. We spent about a week reviewing his lessons from starts of this school year. He then spent 3 days finishing all exam materials as I didn’t want him to do all in one day. This has been our practice since we started homeschooling 3 years ago.
Aside from exams, Ian the activity highlights for this month. Like usual, I keep his homeschooling journey open to everyone who reads this blog as part of portfolio building, as required by his homeschool provider. His homeschooling highlights posted on here are just some of the activities we do at home. I hope that with blogs like this one, I am able to inspire parents out there who are looking to homeschool their children. Happy reading!
OCTOBER
HIGHLIGHTS
If you have been reading this blog a while, you’d know that watercolor is our favorite medium at home. When Ian started his art class with Watercolor Afficionados, I was a little hesitant to lend him my artist-grade paints because I’ve seen him paint with his student grade ones and boy does he paint with gusto! He maxed out a palette in less than a month! So prior to the start of his formal class with WA Kids, I taught him the difference between student grade and artist grade, as well as the difference in application. Thankfully, Ian learns fast! For this month, their theme was the solar system – his favorite subject so far!
I snapped this photo after Ian’s older brother happily told me that he beat him in chess for the first time! Ian has show, interest in chess that he would hover around his older brother whenever he plays online. I got them this set because of that and they play with it a few times in a week.
Ian studied the animal kingdom for science this month. As part of his performance tasks, I asked him to classify animals according to their shared characteristics after watching a few documentaries and reading his reference books. He used his stuffed toys for this exercise but as you can, we also included Kung Fu Panda, our unicorn amirugumi doll, and Pikachu in the mix. Ian then postulated which group Pikachu and unicorn would belong based on appearance and movies about them. Ian and Gugu argued a bit about it too that it felt like being in a science conference, home edition!
Our local homeschooling community in our city hosted an event for United Nations Day. The event was one venue for kids to interact with one another via Zoom by sharing about the country of their choice. A number of kids and their parents participated including Ian and me. For the said activity, I asked Ian to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about Australia, our country of choice. He used my personal photos taken during my visit in 2012 for the presentation. We also prepared his koala bear stuffed toy, toy boomerang, sheep’s fur (taken from a farm I visited in Brisbane), and gemstones that I bought from that trip as well. Ian used these stuff as part of his presentation. Ian’s friends also presented and we enjoyed interacting with them. The kids showed food from countries they represent, as well as flags, national costumes, and greetings in different languages. If I have to choose which activity was my favorite for this month, this would be it! Below is the video slide of Ian’s presentation about Australia:
For Math, Ian used his exercise book as well as reference book to learn how to multiply numbers. When I was his age, my teacher asked everyone in the class to memorize the multiplication table. It was a nightmare at first until each of us saw the pattern. I did not ask Ian to memorize the table but I wanted him to see the pattern through real life examples. We grouped various objects at home to demonstrate how one can multiply the number of elements. He seemed to have gotten the hang of it. I did ask him to look multiplication tables just to see which worked for him. I think both techniques work. How about you? How did you teach your child to multiply numbers? Do share in the comments section. I would love to see your ideas!
To practice what he learn from his Computer lessons on Microsoft Word, I asked Ian to write a short story using the vocabulary rules he learned from past lessons. He doesn’t like writing on his notebook but he does enjoy typing on my computer. I am not sure at this point if he likes to write stories, honestly, but he’s one who likes to tell stories. He’s very talkative! So I thought I’d give him this exercise where he express himself through writing. It seemed to work. He was able to write his first true short story. The story was about a little mouse who saw a mouse trap with cheese on it, right beside a foot of a giant. He was so tempted to take the cheese but was also aware what the mouse trap does. In the end, the little mouse was able to get the cheese with the help of a friend. I laughed after reading his story. I am thinking if I should ask him to write often.
Ian also finished his exams and passed with flying colors. 🙂
The Fabulous Scientist 