The First Week of School

The curriculum that I chose to use is called Konos. The lessons are based on themes, so that all four children can be learning the same theme but their assignments are tailored for their age-level. They each have their own math and language arts books, but we spend a relatively small amount of time doing workbooks (which is why Johnathan can do his workbook on the floor under some pillows without getting extremely uncomfortable). This curriculum focuses more on activities and discovery learning. If you've ever seen The Magic School Bus, then you know what I'm talking about.

I chose to start the year learning about Cooperation. If there's any way we will survive this school year, it will have to involve cooperation. There are several subjects in the Cooperation Unit, including the human body (ie. all the body systems work together), the 50 states (working together to make one country), and bumblebees (you get the idea). The last subject is about the family, and that is what I started with. We will come back to the other subjects later in the year.

While learning about families, we discussed our own family tree and attempted to make one for our wall. That led to discussions on the different races of our ancestors. I had checked out quite a few books from the library about races and families around the world. They discovered that children around the world have a lot in common.

We read a fascinating book about America's oldest family farm, and how they worked together to keep it running all these years.

As an example of a family that worked together during hard times, we watched the movie "Little Women" and read some exerpts from the book. Normally, this is not a movie that my kids would have been able to sit still for. But I made a rule at the beginning of the week that there will be no TV on school days, so they were starting to go through withdrawal. I think they would have watched anything I put on the TV.

My plan for Wednesday afternoon was to come up with games for the kids to play that would involve cooperation rather than competition. Surprisingly, while I was still finishing my lunch, the kids started to play pretend. At first, they were making a human sandwich.

And then, someone had the idea to make a fort in the living room. My first inclination was to tell them "no" because it would make a big mess. But.... when I realized that they were inventing their own cooperation games and they weren't begging to watch TV, I decided to let them do it. They played kings and queens in a castle for over two hours before they started to get annoyed with each other!! And they got it all cleaned up before Luis got home. :)

Other activities during the week included working together on a story about "The Perfect Family Vacation", learning some spanish words for family members, acting out situations that cause conflict and finding a peaceful solution, and discussing our roles in the Family of God.

So that's it for our first week. Of course I won't be giving a detailed account every week, but I knew some of you were wondering how our first one went. :)