Overall, I think the week went pretty well. Doing all the learning in the morning is definitely the way to go for Steven. Yesterday we got back from our walk late and I had to start work right away and forgot to be like “hey, do your work” and he “forgot” that it was Friday (after we had already done music, french and phys ed?) and getting him to start in the afternoon was a chore. But the rest of the week had very few complaints.
I did have to redo the current events assignment. He looked at my original instruction sheet and was instantly overwhelmed and panicking. So I told him to move on to the next day’s work and promised to redo it that night. I broke it down into 2 new worksheets, a World News one and a Canadian News one. I might make another version later in the year or go back to the original one once he gets comfortable with it. I think he’s going to like this weekly assignment, though. One of the topics he chose this week was Ontario’s plan for if a student or teacher gets covid-19, and he had a lot to say about it.
The rest of it went great. The Numbers to 1000000 activity book was easy for him to complete himself, as were the pattern puzzles. I had assigned this Budgeting project for Friday and he looked at it and thought he was missing information. He missed the part that said to use the charts to fill in the information, and because he didn’t flip through all the pages he didn’t see the charts. So next time he tells me he’s missing information I’m going to remind him to read the whole assignment first in case he’s missing something.
I think I’m going to try and update this blog once a week from now on. I’m not going to post the weekly schedule, I’ll just reflect on the week before and maybe post some ideas I’m working on for the next week.
I’ve been working on an updated French word wall that we will be adding to throughout the year. I’ll post pictures and a list of the resources we’ve used when it’s up. I’m hoping we can be having simple conversations by the end of the year, and having the words visible in our living room will help him find the words he needs. I might keep it up and keep doing French practice with him even if he goes back to school next year.
Steven’s really been enjoying learning piano too. We’ve been using this free music fundamentals workbook that I had printed and bound at staples, along with the free sheet music from the same site, and they’ve been really easy to follow. I think he regrets not learning it sooner, but he’s always been unsure about taking classes for anything. I feel guilty about it because I think part of the problem is that he knows they’re expensive and he’s worried he won’t like it and it will be a waste of money. Maybe we can pay for lessons next year if he’s still enjoying it.
Phys ed so far has just been going for walks and running laps around the school yard partway through the walk because the weather has been nice and the yard has been empty. We’ll get more creative when the weather is less nice.
Next week I have 2 weekdays off thanks to the long weekend (which we won’t take off school), so I’m planning some fun things as Steven had requested for when I’m available. We’ll be covering decimals and fractions next week, and then the week after we’ll be focusing on equations with integers, decimals and fractions all together.
That’s all for now. Enjoy the long weekend, and stay safe!
