Mrs. Darcy's Homeschool

DAY 1 2016 Thursday September 8th

We will count today as our official get back to school day, as today was the day we sat down and completed school work.

The Giver

We started with language arts and the Giver, Nathan and Genevieve are both completing this novel study.  I started by reading the first two chapters as we only have 1 book.  We always answer the comprehension questions orally, as I find it gives us a really good opportunity to have more in-depth conversations about the book.

the first assignment was a vocabulary game,  they had to roll a dice
 to determine what part they had to answer, parts of speech, definition,
 use in sentence, synonym/antonym

here they are playing the game, Nathan saw me about to take the picture and tried to escape,
 the only picture I got of them today!

they had to decide what they would like to be if  they lived in the society in the giver,
 Nathan choose to be a nurturer, I know he loves younger kids,
but this surprised me a little.  He had to handwrite today
as his computer is in the shop for repairs.

Here is Genevieves answer to the same question, because she has just had hand surgery she video taped her responses, she did attempt to write with her left hand, doing not a bad job of it!  

So I know moving beyond the page I think suggests maybe 1 - 1 1/2 hours to complete LA, it always takes us 2 hours to complete if we do all the assignments... so we did LA from 9-11:10

Recess

Genevieve went upstairs and did her trampoline exercise on the mini re-bounder for 20 minutes, I tried to encourage Nathan to do something active like go shoot some hockey pucks but that did not happen, he rested during his recess.

Social studies (moving beyond the page, ancient Egypt)

We had to read quite a few chapters from our usborne book

this was our assignment

Nathan thought this brainstorming activity was stupid, and just a way to waste time.  I explained to him that this activity has a purpose and that it prepares him to be an independent learning, it prepares him to look at things differently before he goes and studies.  So when he is on his own learning something and he decides he wants to learn about something he can first think about what he knows and then figure out what he does not yet know, in most cases you will be surprised about how much you already know and that can help in your research, you can narrow down what you then need to focus on.  I could tell he went oh, that makes sense now.  He hates doing busy work, without purpose, it is one of the reasons I like moving beyond the page though is because of all the activities like this one where you are actually building skills for learning and not just regurgitating, information.  They can use these skills for future learning.

this is Nathan's, you have to look past his printing...
It must be so hard for him to do this...

Genevieve completed this, but I can not find it, I thought she did a video, but maybe she did write with her left hand for this one...  she did it anyway

time 11:30-12:30

Math time spent 12:30-1:30

Math I have decided that we will focus on basic math fact memorization for the first few weeks.  So we did a few things today to help with this.  Nathan was unhappy to be studing math facts and said it was below his level, but I did remind him that he does not know them, and it will help him if he just memorizes them.  He knows them by skip counting, but I would like him to be faster.

We started with flash cards

moved on to math wrap-up rap

we ended with snap it up multiplication, I know Nathan learned his
 basic addition facts with this game, so it will prob help him
 learn his multiplication facts

Extra curricular

Papers route 1 hour, Nathan did the paper route by himself because we forgot it was Thursday

Genevieve cheer practice 3 hours 

Genevieve went to bed reading from her science book to get ahead for tomorrow.