January has been a busy and brutally cold month for us. After a wonderful winter break with the eldest, we finally had to drive him back to his college – sad days! Still, it was a wonderful time with him and he did amazingly well his first semester. He received A’s in Biology, Chemistry, and Music Theory and an A- in his freshman seminar. Another student homeschooled K-12 makes the Dean’s list.
With this latest “polar vortex” as the media enjoy calling it, we have caught another cold. I’m getting over it, the youngest seems to be ok but the 10th grader has been thoroughly miserable. We haven’t been out of the house since Thursday except to shovel snow. The youngest and I shoveled snow and we were so exhaused afterward we didn’t drive anywhere. When we awoke this morning, the drive was filled with snow again. We didn’t shovel anything today. It will still be there tomorrow.
The youngest is doing really well with her lessons. I think she shines with the extra one-on-one time she gets with one brother gone and the other flopped on the couch with his cold. She is doing very well with her math as well as with her science. She had a violin recital on January 19th and she was awesome.
We use Saxon Math and she has a pretty good attitude about it. I don’t make her do every problem of the mixed practice. Most days we do the warm up, read the lesson and do the lesson practice and then 10 or so of the mixed practice. There are some fun math sites we sometimes use, but mostly, she enjoys working with the Saxon book and we don’t bother getting extra lessons. Her new favorite thing is to try and write her numbers as neatly as possible. This is a treat for me to see one of my children working hard to have nice writing. Now if only she would do the rest of her handwriting with such care! It was fractions today and she seems to understand them solidly.
We are studing Earth Science for her science and I get most of our lessons from the library or online. There are alot of fun ideas.
The last set of science activities we did was a whale lesson plan which we somehow connected to the Wendy Orr book, “Nim’s Island.” We read the book, mostly chapter by chapter before bed. At first she hated it because the mom in the story is dead. (Not a spoiler, it starts out that way!) We have the same gripe with most Disney movies – they always kill the mom. Anyway, I digress – back on point. We read the story and by the end, she really liked it. We requested the next book, “Nim at Sea” and we watched the movie “Nim’s Island.” We both agreed we liked the book better. (Nim is also homeschooled.)
A fun little site is Return to Nim’s Island. There is a section of nim-crafts. Wendy Orr also has a book called “NIM’S ISLAND: Excellent Stuff to Make, Cook, Read, Do.” There are some very fun ideas, but we could probably come up with some of our own as well. Any recipes made with coconuts would work, just for starters.
So, our science lesson turned into a reading/english lesson which turned into crafts and cooking. Just like life, it all kind of rolls together.
Other links related to Nim’s Island with ideas for a Nim’s Island Lesson plan:
- http://www.homeschoolshare.com/nims_island.php
- http://www.libertyhillhouse.com/2012/01/13/nims-island-literature-adventure-overview/
- http://www.halfahundredacrewood.com/2011/05/nim-island-unit-study-lapbook.html
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