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!
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.
Covid-19 related news got a little weird today. Weird like “wtf?”, not like funny weird. Canada made it illegal not to isolate if you’re coming home from outside the country. It’s about time, really. I don’t know how people didn’t understand that isolating meant not going to get groceries before going home. But the weird part is people faking covid-19. I’ve seen an article about someone giving a fake doctors note saying they had covid-19 in order to get away with staying home from their job at McDonalds, forcing all the people who worked with them to isolate and the business to close and deep clean everything. I saw another article about a “prank” in which someone went into a grocery store and coughed and spit all over everything and loudly claimed they had covid-19, causing that business to close for cleaning and discard tens of thousands of dollars worth of product. If I remember correctly, that person got charged. But seriously… what is wrong with people?
Meanwhile, Trump is saying everything will be back to normal in the U.S. by Easter. That’s like 2 weeks away. And last I checked, they had the most covid-19 cases of anywhere in the world. If they keep putting the economy ahead of the people, there will be no economy because there will be no people. Oh, and they’re trying to put more troops on the border… like any Canadian wants to sneak into the States right now…
I do love all the memes, though…
Covid-19 related memes that amused me this week.
Anyways… homeschooling… we made Fridays pretty laid back on purpose. We did our daily yoga and French and then had a discussion for Health about what might motivate someone to work out, or what might make them not want to work out. In preparation for this, I googled some stuff and jotted down like 5 things I wanted to make sure to mention. But mostly we put some ideas out there and let Steven carry most of the discussion. This might not work with some kids, but once you get Steven talking it’s hard to get him to stop!
Our birds in progress, made from Crayola Model Magic.
We started with Crayola Model Magic (thank you, Staples, for offering free shipping during this time), using some copper wire for support. I had never used it before. It’s weirdly foamy and squishy, kind of like kinetic sand, and you can store it in an airtight container to keep playing with it, but it supposedly dries hard in 3 days. I’m interested to see how easy it is to paint and to glue things to.
Then Steven spent the rest of the day working on his Dungeons and Dragons campaign and finishing the writing part of the bird assignment. That reminds me, I should add “make a DnD character” to my weekend to do list, since we’re playing Monday! Steven’s one-shots are always fun.
We started our first day a little late, and to be honest, all 3 days so far have been a little off schedule. But we decided not to get too stressed out about it. Flexibility is one of the perks of homeschooling, after all. We have so far ended up back on schedule by the end of the day.
Steven and I started with 20 minutes of yoga (I have a subscription to The Yoga Collective, I love their videos, and there are lots of good beginner ones) for Phys Ed and then took a break to make some smoothies. We then drank the smoothies while playing “Who is it? Guess it!” in French for French class. It’s a game much like “Guess Who?” that has the option to play in English, French or Spanish. Then we moved onto the subject that would take up most of the day, Language Arts.
In preparation for the first day of homeschooling, I had started googling ideas… and ended up looking at art projects because I love art and there are some crazy creative teachers out there! But we had decided that Monday was going to be Language Arts, so I needed to find something to work on reading or writing or oral presentations.
I had found this awesome blog post about an art teacher’s class making birds sculptures, and I just kind of expanded on it to turn it into a Language Arts lesson too. I made a printout that asked Steven to write out 10 of his personality traits, and then relate those to traits a bird might have. Then I got him to write why he chose each one… and by the time he finished that, he was ready to move onto something else, so we set that project aside for now.
Steven working on his “If I was a Bird” project. Wearing the same shirt he wore the day before and not caring about his messy hair. The joys of self-isolation!
My plan is that on Friday (for Art), he will make a sculpture of his bird, and then next Monday he will turn what he has written into a script for a “nature documentary”, which we will film. But since he was clearly done with it, for now, I let him continue on his self-assigned project, which is a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot that he wants to run for us (that’s got some Language and math and stuff, right? I’ll write more about that later, for those less familiar with the game). The plan is to run that for half the day next Monday and finish up the bird stuff for the other half. Though he might finish the bird assignment in other free time when other lessons are done. He worked on it a bit today too.
And while he was working on his project, I managed to make a huge pot of soup and cross some other things off my to do list. I think I was worried homeschooling would be stressful and take up all my free time, but that hasn’t been my experience so far.
I think the biggest struggle on our first day was convincing Steven that he didn’t need to stress or rush. That he could work on something else if he was getting frustrated, and the other project would still be there when he was ready, he wasn’t holding anyone else up. By the end of the day, he was even saying things like “and if we need to take a few days of summer for school, we can”.
I think that’s all for now. Stay safe everyone! ~Lauren
