Posted in Covid-19, Homeschooling, Scheduling

Grade 7

Obviously I’ve been great at blogging this school year…

I just realized I never actually gave an update when I was done planning the year. But if you click on “resources grade 7” at the top of the page you’ll see how I have our weekly folders set up. Below is our homeschooling wall/checklist… before we had things checked off. I could take a new picture, but I’m not going to.

The school year so far has been up and down. Steven is not overly excited about it, but understands it’s important. I try to make it fun, but he generally just wants to get the work done… but at the same time, he often doesn’t want to do anything independently. I worry he’s maybe a little too dependent on me being available to help. I do make sure he is doing the work, and I’m not guiding him through it every time. Usually I’m just kind of here as moral support after the first couple questions. But often it’s a struggle to get through it. Still, most “weeks” can be completed in a day or two, so we’re getting through it on my days off.

I am still glad we made the decision to continue homeschooling this year. Predictably, there is currently another lockdown, and schools have gone online again. First they said they’d start school a couple days later, now they’re saying 2 weeks online, but I suspect it will be longer. As much as homeschooling can sometimes be a struggle, online was impossible, and Steven does not do well with constant changes and not knowing what’s going to happen from one week to the next.

Hopefully everyone reading this had a fun and safe holiday,
~Lauren

Posted in Art, Covid-19, Grade 6, Health, Homeschooling

Photography Challenge, Growth Mindset and Lockdown

Photography

I had my camera out the other day and Steven was suddenly very interested in it. He has lots of devices he could take photos with, but the actual camera really caught his attention. So we’ve decided to take on a weekly photography challenge!

The list of weekly prompts is at the top of this post. You can download and print the colour version or the black and white version if you want to post it on your wall or something. Week 1 is this week, ending January 9. I made a facebook group for sharing the photos. Feel free to join us!

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Posted in Christmas, Covid-19, Financial Literacy, Holiday, Homeschooling, Language Arts, Life, Math, Writing

December

Sometime last month we got so focused on NaNoWriMo that I stopped posting here. And this month it’s been a struggle to get back into the school routine with all the Christmas excitement going on. Binky, our elf on the shelf, is back, and shopping is a whole different hassle this year (we are not going to any malls or even most stores – we’re in a red zone now), and my work is busy, and I’m trying so hard to get some school work done with Steven before his chosen Christmas Break starts December 21. I might do a couple more short posts for Yule and Christmas but I mostly won’t be posting until the new year.

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Posted in Covid-19, Homeschooling, Language Arts, Life, Memes, Politics, Writing

NaNoWriMo and U.S. Election

Homeschooling

In my eagerness to start writing a novel last weekend, I kind of completely forgot to post on the blog! But honestly, I didn’t have much to say. We finished our NaNo prep and we’re on to writing!

Steven ended up setting the bar high. The “default” NaNoWriMo goal is 50000 words, and Steven’s goal is 67860 words. And here I was thinking it would be easier to write to his goal this year! We’re both a little behind, but we’re planning on catching up this weekend.

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Posted in Covid-19, Holiday, Homeschooling, Life, Science, Social Studies, Space, Thanksgiving

Solar System Model Building – homeschooling week 6

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope whatever you are doing to celebrate this weekend, you are safe and have lots to be thankful for. Some things that I am thankful for this year:

  • our collective health
  • family and friends (especially our grocery fairy) who have helped us immensely while we continue to stay isolated
  • being able to work from home
  • being able to homeschool Steven
  • the internet for keeping us connected to the outside world
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Posted in Covid-19, French, Grade 6, Homeschooling, Language Arts, Life, Reading, Science, Space, Writing

Exploring the Solar System (week 5 homeschooling)

Week 5: Solar System Reading Comprehension

One of the science units for grade 6 is space and the solar system. So this week was focused on learning about the rest of the planets. Steven had already read about a couple of them over the last couple of weeks. They were easy to fall back on when he was struggling with math and I had to work.

This week, Steven completed the solar system reading comprehension activities found here this week. He also completed the key terms and solar system worksheets in this workbook. I bought the bundle that covers all the science units for grade 6. I then had him use these worksheets to make a plan for building a model solar system. I’m sure I’ll have lots of photos of that next week.

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Posted in Birthday, Covid-19, fractions, Holiday, Homeschooling, Life, Math, Science

Birthday and week 4 Homeschooling

This Wednesday was Steven’s 11th birthday. Luckily he doesn’t mind not being able to have a party this year. Last year, knowing that parties aren’t his favourite thing, we suggested doing something else. Maybe a shopping trip or just taking a couple of good friends somewhere. He chose to spend a whole weekend shopping, eating out, playing board games and video games… He now refers to his birthday as his “reign of terror” because as long as we don’t go over budget, he can do and make us do whatever he wants. This year I apologized that we couldn’t take him and his friends out somewhere and he said he’d rather have a “family time birthday” anyways. Apparently, until last year, he thought birthday parties were some kind of unavoidable social obligation.

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Posted in Art, Budgeting, Covid-19, Current Events, Homeschooling, Integers, Language Arts, Math, music

Week 1 reflection

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.

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Posted in Covid-19, Homeschooling, Life

2020 school year – grade 6

We’ve done a lot of talking about school over the last few months, especially recently. We were waiting to see what the school board had planned, but school is only a few weeks away and they haven’t given us much. Schools are opening again. Grades 4+ are expected to wear masks, but class sizes aren’t reduced at all so social distancing will be impossible. They are “cohorting” so that kids are with all the same kids all the time, and staggering breaks, but teachers for French and Music and such will still be visiting all classes. And there are some huge things they haven’t addressed. Like, Steven’s school only has 3 washrooms. Each one is shared by like 8 classrooms. Is it someone’s job to constantly clean the washroom? What about shared resources? Library books? Art supplies? Toys?

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