It was just too nice to stay inside yesterday, so we took school outside. Besides being distracted by the neighbor kids playing (public school was out for the day), the kids did remarkably well on school...maybe we should do school outside more often.
I've been working on making each of the kids a notebook for school, so everything is all together when we're traveling and ready to work on when we have time. I'm also doing it for this:
Every night Alison asks Ben to ask her school questions and then I try to fill him in really quick on what she learned that day. Now, she can just hand him her notebook and he can see what questions to ask her. I'm also hoping this is a useful tool for reviewing and mastering things she's learned throughout the year.
This week, I learned the power of a map.
We have a world map and a US map hanging in our schoolroom. We've only done a few lessons on geography when we drove to Michigan, but use the map a lot to talk about where we've been or where our family lives. This week, we put stickies on the map where Alison has been and the states we'll drive through to move to Arizona. I plan on making a geography unit study for our move, but was shocked yesterday when I realized how much the kids already know just from looking at this map. They are sponges! A friend gave us this puzzle a few days ago and both Alison and Eli put it together all by themselves. Then, Ben asked Alison if she knew some state capitals, and she actually did!
Visual aids have more impact than I realized. Now I'm wondering what else I should hang up in our school room.
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