The first weekend after school begins, there is a bit of pressure to keep up the learning and doing and all of that stuff, but we both needed a break from it all.

I spent the morning lounging around in bed until at least 9am, which for unknown reasons felt oddly decadent. Possibly because I think I must have woken up at 7am, and just picked up my e-reader to keep reading Andy Weir’s Hail Mary (and eventually finished it during the weekend - very cute book)

We did do some fun things, I’ve started working on some raised beds and dug into the earth to trench them, but yesterday was also kind of a draining dreary type of day.

Day four we are aiming to do the following:

• Talk about what makes someone or something alive and make a list of what’s alive around us.
  • there is a google preview of pages 10-11 of Natural World
• One Small Square
  • find a small square to observe
  • add our notes in our nature journal
• Continue Lecture 1 of High Park Nature Centre’s Nature Journalling for Naturalists. (it’s about 17 minutes, and we have 8 minutes left)
• Read more Tale of Desperaux
• Astronomy Unit from Pandia Press
• Archeologists Dig for Clues
• Wild Math/Khan Academy
• Organizing things into Categories - A lesson on Categories from BFSU (Basic Foundations for Scientific Understanding)
  • sort it out
  • L is for Library
  • We’re going to use this lesson to sort recycling into containers and paper/cardboard.

What did the day actually look like? - Spend an inordinate amount of time watching and reading books on Kanopy Kids during breakfast: - including: Rosa Parks, Susan B Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr, Louis Pasteur. We also learned about Balto, and Koko the gorilla. - Did you know 1&2 from Highlights - We made the “small square” with an old pie box, and spent a very nice amount of time outside, looking at different things within the square and outside of it. Identifying four different mushrooms on the property, and added some great stuff to our nature journal. And also sorted and categorized some of the things we had found outside (flowers, mushrooms, pine cones, ferns.) - watched some of the Nature Journalling video and got some good ideas on what to add. - things like where/when, weather, wind speed, sunrise, sunset, moon phase, and how to organize a page. - We drew some mushrooms. - We did some basic wild math work with a pillowcase ten frame and flowers/rocks/ferns. - We read through the astronomy lab 1 sample, from Pandia Press. - And we talked about what was alive - and what makes something alive and some examples of what’s alive out there. But we’ll have to revisit the Natural World pages again - as they are quite dense. Understandable, but dense. - We did the sorting activity. - We did not get to the Tale of Desperaux today, but I suspect we will read it on the weekend for fun.

Day three was a bit challenging, and we almost didn’t get through it, but somehow we did. I broke the ice with one of the Bean lifecycle craft/worksheets, and it was pretty positive from there, but the day involved more screen time than the first two days. I figure we’ll find out a balance eventually.

• Someone is reading The Life Story here and we’re watching them and talking about history: https://youtu.be/I1tGGEZyCH0?t=818 The Life Story Act 2 continued
  • the book (which is a different version than the one being read above) is also available here: https://www.scribd.com/read/367595395/Life-Story (this was cute for the first few acts, but eventually got weird and very pro-settler and ignored Indigenous people or the fact that “discovery” is kind of a silly word to use for a place that already had people in it.
• More pre-history - https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-history-beginnings/origin-humans-early-societies/v/history-and-prehistory (this one was adamantly declined, but we’ll come back to it someday - it’s not really for 6 year olds anyway.
• Archeologists Dig for Clues (Pg. 4 – 17)
• Planets workbook construction.
• Seeding activity from School Garden Curriculum.
  • How do seeds grow?
  • Bean and Apple worksheets from here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Plant-life-cycle-foldable-sequencing-activities-sunflower-pumpkin-apple-bean-6081908
  • Eat apple pie.
• Finish Book 2 of The Tale of Desperaux.
• We are stilly waiting for a copy of The Nature Connection, but glanced at the worksheets here: https://www.storey.com/the-nature-connection-worksheets/
• Write in our nature journal.

Another day, another day of school. We’re using a few different curriculums, and combining some pieces here and there.

We’re sporadically following Build Your Library level 0 and 1, Wild Math 1, Khan Academy Grade 1&2, and a school garden curriculum book.

Today we’re doing: - How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, someone was kind enough to read the whole thing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w03XWpdfKRE. There is a cute PDF resource from a school available Here if you find yourself doing the same thing. - Find the places mentioned in the story on Google Earth. - Talk about the ingredients for apple pie that are found all over the world. - Talk about how not all of the ingredients in the story are required, and find alternatives for eggs and milk/butter, and go on a virtual adventure to find them all. - We looked at this Bianca Zapatka recipe for vegan Apple Pie, and went on a journey for all the ingredients. Wheat (Alberta), Sugar (costa rica), Sea Salt (Newfoundland), Olive Oil (Greece), Apples (Northumberland County, Ontario), Corn Starch (Iowa, USA), Cinnamon (Sri Lanka), Nutmeg (Indonesia), Lemon (India). - This story and activity was also a great opportunity to ask for some narration. - Zooming out on google earth, lead nicely to the next activity. - Discus earth’s place in space - solar system. - https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Solar-System-Color-and-Trace-FREE-4424357 - https://superstarworksheets.com/writing-worksheets/handwriting-worksheets/planets-handwriting-worksheets/ - https://easyteaching.net/science-worksheets/earth-space-science/solar-system-worksheets/ - Poetry - A reading and recitation of Make The Earth Your Companion - by J Patrick Lewis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4l_EQCwzJc - Star wars writing Grade 1 - Outdoor wild math stuff and Nature journal notes for the day. - walk and run and dance outside. - Reading more of The Tale of Despereaux.

I’ll just jump into it. We’re homeschooling again, and this time, I’m vaguely inclined towards a bit more structure in our days, and some people had expressed interest or concern about the material we will be covering.

I also realize that I wish I had posted my Alphabet activity as I went for kindergarten, because we both really liked it, and perhaps this can serve as a bit of a record of what we’re doing for grade one.

We have a combination of Build Your Library activities, Singapore Math, Khan Academy, Torchlight, Wild Math, and Basic Foundations for Scientific Understanding.

So here is what’s on the schedule, in no particular order, and we’ll see what we get through, and follow up afterwards:

• We’re going to watch this video of someone reading Me on the Map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgA3P_KkdHU, this is kind of an awesome introductory geography activity where kids can see where they are in relation to the rest of the world, and how they fit.
• Relatedly, we will do this activity from Playdoh to Plato - https://www.playdoughtoplato.com/me-on-the-map-craft/ which is generously provided as a printable, but I’ve modified ours to say province. (I also saw this great video on youtube for a more customizable DIY version, but I don’t have the inclination to do it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgA3P_KkdHU)
• We will read a couple of chapters of The Tale of Despereaux together which I got from the Library and discuss some of the themes and highlight a few vocabulary words.
• An introduction to nature journalling. We will do and talk about Lecture 1 of High Park Nature Centre’s Nature Journalling for Naturalists. (it’s about 17 minutes) - https://highparknaturecentre.com/index.php/nature-journaling-for-naturalists.
• We’ll share the poem “Step Outside. What Do You See?” © 2014 Allan Wolf from THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY® FOR SCIENCE edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/361625045072539941/ and go outside and run around and do some Wild Math.
• A couple of pages from Singapore Math 1A, and a couple of activities of his choice from the Math section of Khan Academy.
• Play a game (Valence or vegetable soup fraction game)

What did our day actually look like?

• We did watch the video of Me on the Map, which led to looking at the GoogleEarth of the globe, down to our community.
• We jumped around looking at different continents, which led nicely to the Me on the Map Craft. The nice thing about the craft is that it combines scissor skills with writing, while also demonstrating our position in the world clearly and in a tactile way.
• We ended up reading Book 1 of The Tale of Despereaux which was to the end of Chapter 15, and probably would have gone on, if it hadn’t been the perfect break for lunch.
• The kid read Big Trouble with Simple Machines
• A few lessons on Khan Academy, working with some ten frames and addition and subtraction up to 20.
• We watched the intro to nature journaling, from the high park nature centre, and started our first page and collected some observations and drawings at the pond. There were about 10 Autumn Meadowhawks flying around. We also saw a female goldfinch in the trees.
• We went for a 30 minute walk+run, and ended up also doing the Step Outside poem - including some accidental memorization.
• We also played extensively with a race car.