August 2019

With August coming to a close, we're finishing our first (official) month of homeschooling. I'll write more later about the hows and whys of coming to this decision, but for now I just want to share the positives and negatives from this first month.

What went well....
Khan Academy works so well on my phone while we are driving. The two older kids are using it for math instruction and practice.  I like that it's just plain questions and not games. I get a weekly report on their progress and can check in on a dashboard at any time to see how much they've done. They do way more when they use the app on a touchscreen, vs. using the keyboard on a computer.

"Cup of Twenty" - it's a cup with 20 objects in it and a pair of dice. Roll the dice, add them, count out that number of objects and the other person "guesses" how many objects are left in the cup. So simple, fun and not a worksheet, but does the work of a worksheet for number fluency.

Keeping the globe on hand for reference during study of any subject. Land and water features make everything make more sense.

Letting them play a lot.

Using the Libby app to check out ebooks and starting the day with reading aloud, either from the app, or from books from our house that they haven't read yet. Sometimes you read a kid a paragraph or a chapter and then just leave it lying around. They won't always pick it up to finish it, but often they will.

Working a day a week at my aunt and uncle's restaurant. My parents watch the kids and teach them all sorts of things only grandparents can. I get a chance to do a very different type of work than I usually do. Everybody wins.

What did not go well...
Kindle Fires suck at everything expect delivering content Amazon has decided you should see. The few things I really wanted the kids to be able to do....check out library materials, work on Khan Academy, play chess and view videos I wanted them to see on Youtube....are really not that easy to make work on Kindle Fires with child profiles set up. And some content, no matter how many times I deleted it, kept reappearing. Passwords are always an issue. Kindles are great for playing Minecraft and viewing Freetime content.

Core Knowledge textbooks for Geography, History and Language Arts are not as useful as I thought they would be. I think it's because I just have PDF versions, and we have yet to really solve the problem of devices for the kids. Also I find that elementary textbooks have so much less information than a regular nonfiction book on that topic.

Focusing attention on the older two, when Max is around. Max kind of steals the show.

Journals. We're writing every day on the principal that I think we ought to, but I can't really say why I think that's important. To me that's a definite sign we should rework this.