Thursday, January 29, 2009

Many Subjects We Learn

I have now had two very successful school days with my kids. My kids are really starting to get it and I can see the fruits of my labors. I am starting to see that I have been able to cover a lot of material with them.

We are almost through the first year of our grammar book. Today we learned the definition of a sentence.

Spelling keeps moving along and I must have given Zach 20 words; he didn't miss a single one. I thought he would get stumped on 'through' and I told him he would, but he gave me a little grin and proceeded to spell it quickly and correctly. But even better than that, Raef's spelling list was about 12 words and he only missed two. It was really great. In addition, the words he misspelled, were done in a correct way. I mean, he followed the phonetics rules, even though it was misspelled. For example, he spelled school...skool. You see what I mean?

We have now gotten to ancient Greece in our history unit and I am stoked! I have never been one who has cared much for the Egypt, Syria, Babylonia stuff. It's just not very interesting to me. Greece is when things really pick up.

We read from Mary Pope Osbourne's version of the Odyssey. It is a great way to ease the kids into Greek Mythology. They loved it and especially liked the part where Odysseus poked out the Cyclops' eye and escaped by tying themselves underneath a flock of sheep.

We also read about Pythagoras in Mathematicians Are People, Too. It is a gem of a book. I think Raef and Zach were so grateful it counted as their math unit and that they didn't have to do a worksheet. The story went perfectly with the Greek theme.

I think I am going to spend a lot of time in the Greek section.

At the homeschool co-op we are in, I am teaching an Astronomy class to my kids and other kids about the same age. It is becoming more abundantly clear to me how important it is for my children to know about Greek mythology. There are so many things in academia that are based on the stories of Greek gods and goddesses.

Therefore, we made a stop at the library today and I checked out a whole lot of books on Greece and Astronomy.

The kids are loving astronomy. I taught them about constellations, the moon, and the sun for the last three classes. I am hoping that we will be able to go and see some constellations this weekend. It requires a little bit of driving because the lights of Las Vegas are too bright to see anything really good.

The kids are learning a lot of things. I think 7 is going to be a great age for new discoveries.

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