May 2020

Reading aloud: 

We are moving from the American Revolutionary War to the Civil War.

We just finished reading about the American revolution, what led to it, what exactly the regular folks in the colonies thought they fought for, what the rich colonists incited a war for, and  how this is all reflected in the constitution.

Now, we are moving to the next big episode, the Civil War. We are using the Two Miserable Presidents as our spine to set the background. We are going to read about Gettysburg, and also about spies and code breakers in the civil war.



We will probably refer to the information on spies and codes later on when we study these as part of the math curriculum. It is unfortunate that fundamental issues of war are not often taught in the school textbooks. Another unfortunate truth about textbooks is that they do not speak much of the impact on civilians, and the organizations or way of thinking that are still with us today that originated in response to the big event that is being discussed. We are using real books rather than textbooks for a first round through world history.

Individual Readings:

This will be the first month when the kids will read the same books and will swap them. The sixth grader already read Day of Tears and the Life of Frederick Douglas.

The kids will read The War Within and Bull Run.

The War Within tells the experience of a Jewish family which immigrated from Germany and settled in the South, and how this family was treated in 1861 under the expulsion of Jewish in the territories controlled by Grant. It speaks to conforming and the unintended consequence of good intentions; it speaks to confirmation bias; it speaks to the necessary failure of generalizations. The book covers a lot that is relevant to today and young kids know about.

The fourth grader one day will be asked to read the books below, but he does not need to read them now. He will be asked to read Who was George Washington Carver.

Science:

We will do a qualitative study of the Human Body through this comic book. The kids will read it independently, and we will read it as a read aloud together. There are a few other books that I have on the human body that we will use. My intention for the summer is to take the kids through a complete First Aid course.

We will begin our study of Science with chemistry. Both kids know enough math to go through some of the scientific concepts in quantitative way but first we will examine the ideas. The summer will be dedicated to science.


We are in a stable homeschooling mode. We operate on a five days per week schedule. We begin on Sunday and end on Thursday. Friday we usually catch up on the. reviews we did not complete on Thursday, so Fridays are easy days. Saturdays are music days, so these are easy as well.

We are covering English: reading and writing. The 6th grader has a literature curriculum and both have a writing curriculum which is focused on history. In the fall I will bring back spelling. No need for it now since we are working on vocabulary and spelling through the independent readings.

We are covering Math. We are on track to finish Algebra with the 6th grader by December. The 4th grader is on track to finish Beast Academy by July.

We are covering Portuguese. This is a little subtle as I don't have a curriculum. I alternate between reading, watching videos and grammar exercises. I will need to add more direct one-on-one conversations with the kids. We have been adding little pieces to our program over the last month and a half. This piece is next. We are also reading a Portuguese read aloud.

We are covering history as a read aloud and through independent reading.

We have just begun science. The summer will be dedicated to science. We will ease off in July and August. June will be a full home-school month.

The Pandemic:

The bummer about the pandemic is the lack of human-to-human interactions. The kids miss that and I miss that. I would not mind homeschooling when I know I can send them to a camp or to an activity where they will hang out with friends and forge relationships. It is also unpleasant that with the looming good weather we cannot travel and visit the marvels of the country or even travel abroad. Very unfortunate. Our passports are also expiring this year and we wont be able to renew them properly for many reasons.