School Journal 2018-19

6th, 3rd, 20-month old : snippets, slices, slabs of moments and doings

irregular, infrequent, and incomplete thoughts & lists on learning, education, play. or sometimes just snippets of conversation with our kids amidst life, which is one of the most beautiful and wonderful ways of learning. I will possibly include older snippets and slices involving work of the past; many of which now degree hold some level of humor or eye-rolling, as many examinations or remembrances of the past tend to do.

2019

February 7

Health. We discuss the immune system and how hand washing is important. It is. Seriously. How do so many adults not realize this? Other ideas: germs, immunity, diseases, leukocytes, lymph nodes, phagocytes, antigens, antibodies.

January 9-16

Health. They track their screen time for each day. The low is 20 minutes (Wednesday, the 3rd grader; his sister the 6th is 30 minutes, both from playing a Pacman-style game on a $20 retro console I have on a 9” television. Seriously). The high is 90 minutes (Friday, watching a movie). Their time generally comes from watching films together - all of us.

I have them take a quiz together on screen time usage. They pass.

NOVEMBER 2018

Miscellaneous

A 6th grader reviews words such as cologne, knead, campaign, knuckles, plural, aisle, and other examples of strange English-language spelling. Those wr/rr, nn/gn, and -el, -le, -al combinations…

October 2018

October 09

Health. We continue discussing the idea of screen time. What are alternatives? What kind of usage is healthy, in terms of content and quantity?

October 03

Health. I have a 3rd grader interview a 6th grader on her views about screen time. It is so much better than if I asked the questions myself. She discusses the role of vision, headaches, and weight gain in relation to quantity of screen use. Other things she enjoys: playing outside, board games, reading, drawing.

October 02 Tuesday : Things they will do

The 6th grader will rehearse Maths on Khan Academy, suffer through an extensive spelling test (#5) administered by me, complete Wordly Wise #31, and finish homework from her homelink program.

The 3rd grader will rehearse Maths on Zearn, commit himself fully to pursuing enlightenment in Grammar, Reading Comprehension, and Paragraph Editing, and will also dive into finishing work from his homeland homelink program.

They both will spend 20 minutes reading, though I suspect they will try and pull off more. I will force them to go outside and shoot things.* They will gladly practice piano and guitar/ukulele for 15 minutes each with songs leaping off their lips and from their hearts. Furthermore, they will be gifted the opportunity to spend remaining time learning German.

All of those will be done with quiet, measured, ecstatic joyfulness, exactly as I have proscribed and prescribed. Of this I have no little no more than a trifling of doubt.

*with cameras.

September 2018

September 25

Wordly Wise. We review words such as arrogant, boycott, custody, triumph, verdict, and violate. These all sound like they’re straight out of a courtroom. Sample sentences she wrote, that in different ways, reflect her current perspective on life. :)

Someone I might detain from entering my room is my younger brother

The supreme leader in my classroom is my teacher. Note:

I believe there should be an integration of chewing gum in front of my brother. Note: her brother hates gum. This is a not so subtle dig.

A triumph for me would be winning a thousand dollars.

I would be happy to start a campaign to prevent people from logging trees.

Someone who is sick might be segregated to prevent others from getting sick.

September 18

A 6th grader practices creating sentences using words such as persecute, appeal, unveil, poverty, lofty, eloquence, and appeal.