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Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Our First Day of "Official" Learning


This is what our first day of defined learning looks like. Everything seems so much better when done in bed...#1. Qwyn loves my bed...she falls asleep in it ...often. So why not engage her in a discussion about her upcoming year in a place she feels most comfortable...my bed. It worked...we talked about things that I wanted to introduce her to, but also I was able to get her to give me ideas about places and things she wanted to learn about. I posted pics of things I jotted down in an old copybook (repurposed from past years English work...I hate wasting paper). I was able to turn everything into talking points and Qwyn actually seemed interested. There will be loads of writing opportunities this year and I gave Qwyn a creative reflection copybook (also repurposed...lol) to write her ideas and opinion about weekly Ted Talks we will watch together. We actually watched one today called Adults Can Learn From Kids....interesting and well presented. For the month of September I will choose the talks however I encouraged Qwyn to pick future ones. We talked about 3 reasons why she felt it would be a good idea for her to watch Ted Talks...she came up with good ones...1. To gain other people's perspective. 2. To develop her own opinion on the topics 3. Open her mind to new ideas (I helped with this answer). Last year she worked on researching facts about all 50 states and all the presidents. This year Qwyn is working on all 7 continents and she chose various countries to research(at least 2 on each continent) and decided to do a power point presentation on them, which will not only meet her geography requirements but also computer skills. Qwyn even helped me develop a 10 question worksheet of things she would like to know about each continent and country. To jumpstart English, we both downloaded a free pdf of The Alchemist (http://www.book4free.us/2013/10/the-alchemist-by-paulo-coelho-epub-mobi.html?m=1) so we can read it together. I'm going to use the Sparks Notes guide that I found online to foster discussion. As a writing aide, I reviewed a chapter in her writing guide which includes the format for writing a 3 paragraph opinion paper. She is going to use that guide for Ted Talks and there is a guide in there for research papers as well. Which leads to the next discussion which included the African American women in history. I explained why I wanted her to focus on that theme this year...she seemed ok with it....can never tell with 13 year olds. When I talked about potential field trips which might expand on those themes...she seemed a little more interested. We talked about the need to find a way to incorporate science experiments into cooking lessons...so that is something I will do. Pintrest might be chock full of ideas.  We went back and forth about her learning algebra this year...she wants to learn pre algebra....I'm trying to sell her on Algebra. We will see. What interested her even more was the final topic...what was for lunch....we are agreeing on cheese steak stromboli and are trying to persuade daddy to agree to pick it up...and pay...lol. I think our first day kickoff  was a success!

Now I'm sure some readers are asking the question about our unschooling process and how this looks more like defined homeschool agenda with carefully planned lessons...trust me there is lots of ideas but little organization; also there is no deadline for the work and there is much room for deviation. I still struggle with  giving the evaluator something tangible at the end of the year. What I'm looking forward to are the various opportunities to learn this year....for both of us.