We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled School Time…
13 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Our Progress, Reflections, Schooling Tags: astronomy, careers, Field trips, History, Science
What a busy couple of months we’ve had. Thanksgiving, then one daughter’s birthday, then comes Christmas, followed by the birthdays of my two oldest boys. In the middle of all that, we had Thanksgiving parties and Christmas parties and field trips and family activities and Scouts. And, we found out I’m pregnant! Holy cow it has just been nuts! A good nuts, but still nuts.
Just to briefly follow up on my last post. Logan was able to achieve his goal and earned everything he wanted to. He did a great job!!
So, after all the activities, it’s time to get back to our regular schedule. It was nice to be able to take a break, but it’s also good to be back to it. I love the ability we have to not be constrained to the school district schedule, and be able to make our breaks as long or short as we want. I love being able to work at night or on Saturdays. I love having the ability to say, hey, let’s go over to the airport and watch airplanes for a little bit, right in the middle of the day. Or, to be able to do our school work outside on a beautiful day. I love that we can have pajama day any day we want to. Mostly, I love being able to teach my children and watch them light up when they figure something out or learn about something they really like. I love having that time with my children and being able to really watch them blossom.
Alright, back on track-
This month, the kids are going to be learning more about Colonial America. What was life like for the people in the seventeen and eighteenth centuries in America? My question for the kids to figure out with this: If it weren’t for EVERYTHING leading up to the Revolutionary War, would we still have declared our independence from Great Britain?? What I mean by that is this: The Dark Ages, full of disease, and war, and lack of learning, and stymied religion, led the way for the Reformation and Renaissance to happen. When people saw they could learn and read scripture themselves, they wanted more freedom. When people started making new scientific discoveries, it led to more and more. Then, we get the Age of Exploration, where people were sailing around the globe and discovering all kinds of new lands and people. As we are learning more with science and exploration and religion, we question the crown and the church and want more freedom. People come over to America for a number of reasons, religious freedom, economic opportunity, escape from debt, escape from the horrible conditions that plagued England at the time, and exploration. People started to forget about God, and that led to the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening, like the Reformation and Renaissance, caused people to question things in their daily lives, as well as the authority of others. People became keenly aware of scripture and the stories contained in the Bible. They learned, for example about Moses, and how under his leadership, people had real freedom. The people yearned for freedom and were able to awaken to the injustices they faced under British control. Eventually, this gave way to the American Revolution.
So, if you take one of those things out. If say, the Renaissance didn’t happen, or the Great Awakening didn’t happen. Any of those things. If you take out just one, do we still have the conditions in America for the American Revolution? If you change any one of those events, do we get the United States of America? I would submit to you the answer to that is no. But, I’ll keep that opinion to myself as I teach the kids. I really want them to be able to answer that question for themselves in the next few weeks. Critical thinking is very important here.
Now, on to science. The kids are going to be learning about the Moon, the Sun, and the planets in our Solar System. They are going to be tracking the moon on their own moon calendars. We have some fun nights of observation planned, and we also have an astronomy professor coming to speak to them. We will also be making some more trips to the planetarium. I’m also working on getting a speaker from the Las Vegas Astronomical Society to come speak to us. We will also be joining them for their public star party at the end of the month. Those are always awesome!
We will be continuing on with our phonics and language work. I’ve found the older kids are lacking some things that we thought they had learned, so I’m taking them backwards a little bit, but they sure are learning a lot – and really grasping it. Perhaps it’s better to hold off on some things until kids are a little older and can understand better. Just a thought. Anyway, it’s going really well and I’m very pleased. My little daughter read her first word the other day and just lit up. It was great!
One thing I’m really excited about is our plan to expose the kids to as many careers as possible. We really want them to see as much as we can and help broaden their horizons. Perhaps they will learn about something they never knew about before. I’m working to get us some activities with the firemen, a police officer, a carpenter, astronomer, air traffic controller, and genealogist. Still on the look out for more!
Anyway, things are going well and life is good!
Time to get to work!
