A Day in the Life

It would actually be much more appropriate to title this post "A School Week in the Life" because this post is going to basically be a long list of all the topics we've been covering in school lately, so I do apologize if this turns out to be a terribly boring post. But here we go...

In the warmer months, we used to wake up early, and I especially would make it a point to go outside in the morning to clean up the yard, water, etc. before the start of the school day. By contrast, our mornings in the cold weather months are actually very late mornings. Yup. We sleep in. All the time. You have my permission to judge me. I just cannot wake up early when it's cold out. And I hate cleaning the yard in the cold, so I let it go until I cannot take it any longer and finally pick a warm day to force us (my poor Quijote and I) to clean up leaves and doggie doo and anything else that might need cleaning. This weekend we finally got things cleaned up. Sorta. We still have a lot of work to do... But this is already soooo much better!

 Notice we have fire wood now? Woot woot! Go Daddy! ETA:Actually, Daddy says it was Grandpa who found the firewood person and made this happen! GO GRANDPA!

But yes. We wake up late, and I check my phone and let the kids have a little check in with the world too. But then we have breakfast (usually oatmeal) and I have my cafecito, so we can start the day.

We have been starting out with "Languages" every morning. 

Miss E is studying cursive calligraphy, Mr E is practicing his print style lettering. We are also studying the art of sentence formation, paragraph writing, etc. This is what I think of as the "English" part. We are also studying Nahuatl and Spanish, and for those two languages we have so far covered pronouns, possessive pronouns, articles, the verb to be in present tense, simple sentence forming, colors, items in the house, family members, and some random vocabulary.

This week we also started learning a short love song in Nahuatl. 

We usually then take a break for lunch. The kids do some laps around the house and some quick aerobics exercises, then take a break while I clean the kitchen and prepare lunch. 

The kitchen looks a lot nicer now that I've started starting the dishwasher in the middle of the day to take advantage of the solar power.

 

When Quijote was home during the start of the pandemic we used to have fancy meals all the time because he was around and he enjoys cooking. Now we only have fancy lunch on weekends. During the week I make lentils, chicken soup, rice and tuna, and hummus platters for lunch. We also reheat leftovers- my love of efficiency can be blamed for this. I think this is the time to quickly put something together, and/or a good time to try and get rid of those containers in the fridge.  Q makes such beautiful meals, though. His deserve a picture.

or two.

 

After a short break, the kids and I usually do "Math and Sciences" for our second half of the day. This to me means doing basic arithmetic, and sometimes a little History, Geography, or Social Studies. We have been working on Miss E's multiplication tables. Have I mentioned we love this guy's songs? They have helped Miss E memorize her tables without stressing out as much. Now that she is almost done memorizing all her tables, we are also moving on to division problems, and the section on division from this book really helped her with that.

 

Mostly, though, we use the Brain Quest workbooks. They were inexpensive, and have been very useful, in my opinion. We print out some materials, or use loose paper for creative freedom (all of this ends up in their ring binders, separated by topic) and I have them use their notebooks a lot too. Here is Mr E with his workbook.

Mr E is still practicing the clock, but he is also now learning about coins and bills (the US money system) and Quijote did me the huge favor of swinging by the dollar store the other day and got us this play money. The kids seem to enjoy it, and it's helped me keep Mr.E's attention on the topic at hand.We are using the play money to learn to make change, add and subtract by 1, 5, 10, 20, 25.

What else have we been up to?....

Soon after the Inauguration took place, we listened to the now famous poem "The Hill We Climb" and talked about metaphors and similes. 

 

It was also a great introduction to studying the Civil Rights movement, and we have worked our way back from there to the Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, and Colonial times. We had touched on colonialism during Thanksgiving, so that worked out pretty well: we circled right back to studying the 13 colonies. We have now covered (in very wide strokes) a basic history of the US through the eyes of its people. The kids listened to Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "I Have a Dream" and we talked about his masterful use of rhetoric: His use of religious language, the rhetoric behind poetry, the authority of historical literature which MLK quotes in his speech (such as the Declaration of Independence, which we have also studied), and so on. We thought and wrote about the historical practice of slavery, segregation, and modern racism. We studied a number of historical figures from Colonial times, the First and Second Continental Congress, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and finally, the Civil Rights Movement. I was very proud that the kids immediately made a connection that extended from this much more recent social justice movement all the way back to the near demise of Native American rights during the time of Colonialism, without my doing it for them. They connected the dots themselves by pointing out that the same kind of injustice was going on during both historical times, so we talked about the problem of racism and nationalism. These were all somewhat difficult topics for me to cover with honesty AND without making my explanations too heavy and dark or without becoming too pessimistic. I would never want my children to lose the optimism necessary for actionable thought. I repeatedly reminded them of their important and unusual role in society as members of both ends of this cultural intersection. I think this is a testament to their critical thinking and the importance of their exercising it: that they both naturally concentrate their conversations around solutions, which brings me so much hope. Even though they are so young, we have had many wonderful and meaningful conversations about what we can all do to build a better society.

During the days we covered US History, I also had them construct this puzzle at the end of the day. They are getting better and better at it, and I think this will help them learn the US states little bit by little bit. 

Now that we are done with all of that, we are going back to studying World History. The widening of our focus came about naturally, after I taught them about maps -mostly for the sake of Mr E, who is apparently supposed to be going over this during 1st grade- and the topic of landmarks came up. 

Here we are studying our maps:

We started by studying basic cartography skills, then moved on to the history of landmarks in the National Mall: The Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. And from there, we naturally decided to go bigger, and we watched this video of the Wold's Top 100 Landmarks. I realized we have actually talked about a whole bunch of them during our ancient civilization spree we went on at the beginning of the school year, so I think we should extrapolate! And now that we've made a huge jump to modern history, I also want to try to put that in context and build a bit of a clearer, but more inclusive time line. So we are officially widening our scope. As you might have guessed, the plan is to go over World History through the study of its landmarks. Wish me luck!

So that's pretty much it. At the end of the day, as I mentioned, we do a quick puzzle or last activity- sometimes a quick craft. Then the kids clean their room, and after that, they can have the rest of the day to themselves. If we finish very early I do ask them to go play outside or in their room (ie, I make them have screen-free time) until a certain time of the day. That way I can limit their screen time without outright telling them I am doing it. I do this because in these colder months, we are gravitating a whole lot towards our screens, which I think is only natural; but I want to make sure they do the other stuff, too. 

And I think that's what our school days have been of late! Though I still have a few more pictures~ from our free time during the rest of the day:

 

Crafting with recycled materials:

Daisy hates her booties, but they both need them for their walks.

Finally completed my chairs!

El fin.