Grade 4, Lesson 3, Day 1 ~ A Pokey Day

Oh my, was it ever difficult to get back into the swing of things after the long weekend! Well, maybe not exactly difficult, but we were slow at it. We slept in and I don't think the boys got started with their lessons until nearly 10 a.m. ~ we had to continue them in the afternoon and even then we put off art and music until tomorrow.

I put our chore charts together over the weekend and the boys have taken to them easily. They missed cleaning their room today, however, so I will have to remind them about that tomorrow. I naturally remind them about most of their other chores but do tend to forget about the bedroom.

One interesting thing I am finding about returning to a solid homeschooling rhythm is how great I feel about it and how that spills over into the rest of my day. I am accomplishing my chores earlier and with more joy. In the afternoons I am truly enjoying my leisure as I feel no guilt ~ my household chores are completed (for a bit anyway as dinner still needs to be prepared) and my children have done their lessons (with my help).

We did math today, as if it were Monday. We reviewed multiplication tables, place value, and telling time. I worked with the boys using worksheets of clocks but I do think that the best way to practice telling time on an analog clock is to actually do it, so I ordered a simple wall clock for the "school room" area of our family room.

I think I am letting go of the idea of trying to rearrange Oak Meadow into a more traditional Waldorf block format. It really would be a lot more work for me and I don't think it is detrimental to do it this way.

Also, I am probably going to let go of the Oak Meadow social studies portion of the syllabus. Papa is already reading A History of US to the boys each evening and I am going to try working with that instead. I will plan a project for us once a week in relation to American history and what they have learned so far (they are on the second book of the series) and also work in some local geography lessons. However, we actually studied local geography in depth last year as I coordinated a nature co-op and we visited many natural places, learned about the trees and animals, etc. We'll move the OM social studies work related to a couple of the required reading into our language arts time. In any case, social studies and history are the subjects we explore most often, with science coming next. There is no way my boys could be considered behind in those subjects.

Tonight we went for our walk with the express goal of seeing the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Discovery as their orbit passed through the twilit sky. It was beautiful and really neat!