You’ve likely noticed that I paused on posting daily home school updates, as I didn’t want to overwhelm people’s inboxes. Starting next week, Travis’s school will be sending actual lesson plans, rather than suggestions, so I may go back to daily posts. Either way, the week had its ups and downs, some days where we felt on top of home school, some that were a struggle. This post can’t really capture all that, but here’s a run-down of activities from our third week home schooling for COVID-19.

Please stay safe everyone!

Math:

• Computer games through a school program, all focused on concepts of greater than/less than or addends to 10.
• Stuffed animal counting. We had fun making up silly equations, like “3 animals are having a tea party, and one more joins in. 3+ 1 = 4.”
• April weather graph, with predictions for what we’ll see most (rain) and least (snow).

ELA: 

• Reading a story and then retelling it in your child’s words. We chose ‘Corduroy‘ for this activity, and I then asked him to imagine what might happen next. He said they’d go back to the store and buy a new stuffed animal friend, a giraffe!
• A book ‘scavenger hunt’, in which Travis had to find things like the title, author’s name, count the words in a sentence, locate a question mark, etc. When we finished the book (Click, Clack Moo), he went back to tell me what had happened in the beginning, middle, and end.
• Workbook pages
• Letter tracing pages (G, H, I, J, K)
• Online story time with his teacher
• Writing a sentence with a sight word. Travis’s sentence included several (I, am, the): “I am swinging on the swings”. I loved his picture!
• Online read-through of Puff the Magic Dragon, followed by drawing a dragon in an online paint program.
• Writers’ Workshop. Travis really stuck with it this this week, thinking abut a story instead of his latest Star Wars movie. His tale featured skeleton pirates, and he drew a boat to go with it!
• Sight word rainbow writing, using a different color for every sight word.

Social Studies:

• Community helper video. Travis drew himself as a doctor (which was more about his latest fascination with skeletons and bones).
• Discussion of why a society might have rules.

Science: 

• A BrainPop video about making and testing a hypothesis, after which we tested out what would float and what would sink.
• An online video about plants, followed by a nature walk to find plants.

Recess:

• Spring walks!
• Chalk! Travis drew pictures of pirate skeletons and we also wrote some sight words.

Specials:

• Library:
  • Going through his shelf to sort fiction from non-fiction.
  • Online video of I Am Yoga – with poses, too!
•  Art:
  • Travis drew a self-portrait on a big piece of craft paper, and little sister joined in!
• Spanish:
  • Online video with food words
  • Zumba dancing
• Gym:
  • An online P.E. video from Mr. Joe. Loved watching him do this one!
  • Sock Toss: Place a target on one side of the room and make balls out of pairs of socks. Every time he made a goal, Travis had to take a step back.

• Music:
  • His teacher sent a full 15 minute class video to follow along! This was super appreciated.

Mental Health:

• The school counselor sent a link for a three hour loop of relaxing sounds!

Family activities:

• Puzzles
• Board games
• Handprint cookies
• Purple crayon play dough
• Melted crayon paperweights
• Mini robots
• Graphite circuits