April 2020

March 2020 will be remembered with the stress brought on by the Coronavirus-2019. I pulled the kids completely from their schools, spend a week idling and putting things for a proper homeschool together. We have successfully homeschooled for two weeks now. Our subjects have been English (reading, copy-work, vocabulary, little grammar as the need arises), Math, and music-two instruments per kid.

Now that we are in an stable state, here is what is in store for April. May we make it through this pandemic without any of us five getting sick.

PE: we have been cooped in. We have been taking briefly walks outside. Now that the weather is warming up, my parents will be spending more time in the garden. I have three new bikes in the mail, so hopefully, we will be able to ride on the neighboring trails soon. During the days we have been walking anywhere from a mile to 3-5 miles.

Read Aloud: We have been reading about the constitution. Hopefully, we will soon begin reading about the US history. King George-What was wrong with him?

Portuguese: Turma da Monica em Toquio, learning about the cities where the Olympic games will eventually take place.

English: We are focusing on the second world war, and in particular on the terror scattered by the NAZI. The kids read one chapter per day. We discuss the vocabulary in each day. They do copy work once a week, one day we do dictation, and one day we review key grammar structures. We are moving towards writing simple paragraphs as responses to questions based on the text.

Math: The fourth grader is currently working on finishing Beast Academy 5. He is currently reviewing Integers and Expressions(5A), and is working on Fractions and Ratios(5C), and Sequences(5C). The 6th grader is learning Problem Solving Strategies(AoPS Pre-Algebra-Ch15), Logarithms (AoPS Algebra-Ch 19), and Special features of triangles (AoPS Geometry-Ch 7).

Portuguese is a bit on hold, but it will come back with a sequence of reading, grammar, and videos.

Music is in full force. We are using Zoom for orchestra and piano lessons, and Skype for the cello and the violin lessons.

Engineering: the kids play with Turing Tumbles, and many board games.


Update 4/20/2020:

PE: we got a basketball hoop and three bikes -  one for me, one for my daughter and one for my mom. It has been cold so we haven't been much outdoor, but the weather is improving. The kids have played some but mostly briefly.

Read Aloud: We read King George - What was his problem?, and we began reading Aru Shah and the End of Time this one in Portuguese. Aru has some complex vocabulary so I am translating more. We are moving at about a chapter a day. We will hopefully read about the Louisiana Purchase before moving on to the Two Miserable Presidents, and What Was the battle of Gettysburg.

English:
We used the Last Train and Surviving Hitler to learn about the Holocaust.

The fourth grader mainly read alone, copied a page a day, and learned new vocabulary. Then we discussed the story, and how it fits into the sequence of books he read: Number the Stars, What was the Holocaust, The Last Train. I explained that Number the Stars is fairly friendly, but a nice painless introduction to the horror of the Holocaust; What was the Holocaust brought some important historical facts and historical background, but it was too general to be relatable. The Last Train gave us the human perspective from one point of view, that of a lucky survivor. We talked about the many points of view that exist, and how combined they make the history. We talked about the real toll of the war, by looking at statistics of human life losses per country. We even compared the US toll to the the life lost during the first month of the Covid-19 pandemic. Gives quite a perspective.

The sixth grader read alone, learned vocabulary, wrote short answers to questions about the chapters. We discussed the reality and the logistics of the war from the point of view of the Germans, as well as the prisoners. We talked about the groups that were discriminated against. We will cover the statistics, just as the fourth grader did. The sixth-grader finished the book by putting together a mini project: a collection of questions she would ask Jack, a collection of facts she learned about the Holocaust, and a collection of objects/words she associated with the book. She moved on to reading another heavier novel: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Writing and Critical Thinking of Literature:
We are using the Essential in Literature for 7th grade program. It consists of 4 major units. The first focuses on Fiction Short Stories; the second unit focuses on Non-Fiction excerpts; the third unit focuses on analyzing a Novel, and the last unit focuses on Poetry. It is designed to be a 34-week program, but we are going to cut it short by reading only 4 out of the 7 short stories.

For writing we are going with the Institute of Excellence programs. For the fourth grader we are going with the Medieval History program. The fourth grader is into this kind of history, and even though the program is geared towards 6-8 graders, we will take it as slow as needed. For the sixth grader we are going with the Modern History program. History is not her best suit but I feel that this program covers wonderful life-long skills such as note-taking, narrating, re-producing information from notes, that I myself learned through my history classes as a child. I hope this will work. My plan is to alternate between Essentials in Writing and the writing program, and possibly cover them in one and a half school years.


Math:
The fourth grader finished: Beast Academy A: expressions; Beast Academy C: sequences and ratios.
I am moving him to MOEMS, division E problems; BA -B  fractions and BA-D exponents.

The sixth grader finished: AOPS Geometry Ch7. She will review Ch 5 by the end of the month, and we will move on to Ch 8 - Quadrilaterals. She also finished AOPS Intro to Algebra Ch 19 - Logarithms.  We are reviewing her work on Ch 9 (inequalities) and will move on to Ch 21 - Sequences and Series.

Portuguese: 
Portuguese was re-introduced gradually, after about a month of homeschooling. We are starting with review of what we covered earlier in the academic year : tenses, demonstratives, possessives, basically A1-B1 grade. We are using the Salpicos books with some enthusiasm, Gramtatica Ativa exercises, books from our home library for reading, and movies. Last week they watched Mente Divertida e Touro Ferdinando.

Dynamics/Logistics:
Every evening we review the work they have done during the day, so the kids get immediate feedback. They also immediately receive the work for the following day. The wonderful thing is that they manage their time so that they would complete their work on time. 

1. One nice benefit of homeschooling is that the kids are left with plenty of free time. Some of it is used wisely, some not, but one cannot be efficient all the time. 
2. Another benefit is that they can pursue their own interests, and request tools to help them pursue their interests. B. asked for a subscription to the Great Courses.
3. Yet another benefit is that there is no stress to wake up early, to prepare for a test, to eat fast, to run out of the house. Everyone is calm.
4. And there is plenty of time for recess, whenever they want it. 

Social Science:

Here is the approach:

• We read together a book focusing on a historical episode, and each kid reads a related book at their reading level. 
• The kids writing programs, while focusing on writing and not history, are teaching writing within a historic context. One focuses on Medieval History, the other focuses on Modern History.
• We also have a subscription to the Great Courses: which is unlimited streaming. In the three days that we have had this subscription we have already watched a few classes. In fact, we finished one full class, "1066, the year that changed everything". I am sitting through the German language class, and with my mom we are sitting through the appreciation of music class. For folks struggling with English these courses are phenomenal.