School Update

What's this? A school post? No way...! We really have been plugging along with the school work, but it just isn't the focus of our lives, and I love that. We've been busy with visitors and life learning. Fortunately, school time has gotten much easier, and Crumpet is willing to work with me when I say it's time. This is what school often looks like in our house:
He'd been building a fort, so we did school there.
Hmm, how is the learning going?
Reading is going well. Writing is actually one of his preferred subjects now. I never would have believed that a couple of months ago... Spelling is going pretty well. I don't think Crumpet really knows the rules though - he just intuitively spells the words right now. It will get more challenging soon, I'm sure.
In math, we are working on adding 2 digit numbers. This is not going terribly well. I'm not convinced that he really grasps the concept of place value. Some days, it seems clear to him, and some days he has no idea what I'm talking about. I think we'll take a break and move onto the next topic, and then revisit the subject.
I have slowed science down so we are just doing one topic a month. We do a lot of reading about the subject during the month, and I try to discuss it during the day when appropriate.
We are VERY slowly working through our Artistic Pursuits curriculum. Sadly, art is always the first thing to be skipped when we get busy. I really do like this book though, and Crumpet is willing to try the projects, which is something of a surprise! This was his first pencil drawing. It's a picture of his best friend with a crab and a mouse...
A pigeon using water color crayons:
I loved the crayons, but it annoyed Crumpet that adding water totally changed the look of the picture...
And a bowl we made using air dry clay:
We have also been working on history. We just finished the first part of our Egyptian studies. We turned one of Crumpet's tiny teddy bears into a mummy. Being a boy who loves gory stuff, he loved the study of mummies!
I am having some issues with our history studies. I bought Pandia Press' History Odyssey, and
I don't think I like it... They tend to jump around the Story of the World book, and the order they use isn't making sense to me. I like a few of the extra projects they use, but I think we will stick to the Story of the World and its activity book for future history studies.
We are also having a problem studying both geography/world culture and history. Crumpet seems to be getting confused about what country we are studying, and what happened where. I am seriously considering putting history on hold for a year while we work through our Expedition Earth curriculum. I'm not sure how much history he will truly retain at this age anyway. I'm not as concerned about the geography that he remembers, as long as he gains an interest in the world around him, and begins to understand that there are many different cultures and beliefs in the world.
Outside of school, we've been very busy! We had visitors and we got to do a few new-to-us touristy things. We toured some movie sites. One of them was the site of Jurassic Park! (You can read about our recent travels at my other blog, Crumpet Moves to Paradise, if you are interested.)


We rode through a haunted lagoon at the Polynesian Cultural Center. This was the kid's version, but it was still borderline too scary. Crumpet is just between that little kid fear of spooky things, and that big boy fascination with horror... We checked out the medieval family day at our local art museum and it was a blast. Crumpet built a shield and a working catapult that is awesome! He will be starting a month of horseback riding lessons this week. And we've been doing a lot of this:
Life is good!