Greek Goddess Athena from a series of photos Helena looked up and saved.... Here's what the last few months of child-led learning looked like for us! I don't "require" anything but some daily reading and that she be willing to explore math in some way, shape or form.
Not all of the formatting transferred over from the PDF document, but I think it's still pretty clear... :) Homeschool regulations are different for each state. Here in NY we file an annual plan, quarterly reports, and a final assessment.
First Quarterly Report 2015/2016
Helena Aviles
5th Grade
Hours of Instruction: 225 +
Helena has made satisfactory progress in all subject areas.
Math:
- Read Life of Fred books 1-3 with review of basic arithmetic and introduction to a few new terms
- Watched Math Antics videos on YouTube
- Review of basic geometry such as point, segments, and geometric
shapes along with acute, right, and obtuse angles - Played Skip-bo number game
- Worked on common denominators and fractions
- Introduction to converting fractions to decimals and percents and vice
versa - Basic practical life statistics: figured out mean, median, mode of cost of
items on a grocery receipt; discussed differences; looked at the effect of
outliers - Ran a lemonade and snack stand at town-wide garage sale
- Opened a bank account and is working on selling her hen’s eggs and
saving money
Social Studies:
• Listened to the entire first volume (full year’s worth of social studies curriculum!) of Story of the World on audio CD. This volume covers ancient history “from the earliest nomads to the fall of Rome.”
• Helena read Hera: The Goddess and Her Glory by George O’Connor and Roman Diary: The Journal of Iliona, Young Slave by Richard Platt. - Together we read several of the who, what, where series: What were the Great Pyramids, What was the Great Wall of China, Who was King Tut, and What Was Pompeii.
- We also read Inside a Roman Fort by Manning and Granstrom, and Cleopatra by Diane Stanley.
- We read portions of An Illustrated World History: Prehistory, the Ancient World and portions of The Atlas of the Classical World: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
- And since she’s *really* into ancient history we have a timeline of classical Greece and a timeline of ancient Rome on the wall in the bathroom!
- For all of the stories we discussed the philosophy of history and issues of social justice such as the following: Who gets to write history? Whose viewpoint matters? Is being “the richest and most powerful man in the world” really as important as the author makes it sound? What stories can we find that give a different view of history, maybe of minorities or women? What role did women play in ancient history?
- Geography: road trip to Cape Cod, MA; talked about the different land formations and learned about them in a book; saw cranberry bogs
Science: - Attended weekly several hour science class at Yacon and discussed early (Medieval) scientists and their discoveries and the development of the field of science.
- Continued to study botany and herbalism and Latin names of plants as well as their uses.
- Made herbal remedies and used them
- Read Ranger Rick magazine
- Actively looking for an opportunity to do animal rescue volunteer work
- Did a chemistry science project and explained it in a science fair
- Read The Adventurous Life of a Cape Cod Dog: A Curious Canine’s
Exploration of the Cape’s Natural History by Scaglione-Peck together, in
which we learned all about natural history of the Cape. - Viewed the landscape of the Cape
- Experimented to see what an injured seagull would eat (only our pack of
tunafish and water)
- Viewed whale spouting and a LOT of seals in Cape Cod; even saw a whale but only in a picture we’d taken; we didn’t see him at the time we took the picture!
- Learned that a fox can drag away a very full and heavy soft-backed cooler from a campsite; learned that fox would return the next morning at the same time and stare at us as if to ask why we didn’t leave our coolers out again
- Completed a Minecraft homeschool science session on weather; learned about weather patterns and storms and types of clouds; got a 100% on all quizzes; created a cotton ball project of various cloud types; identified cloud types in real life
English Language Arts
- Daily reading
- Spelling and punctuation and grammar are attended to in real life
scenarios - Madlibs to review parts of speech
- Talked about present, past, future tense of verbs
- Talked about making the subject and verb agree and noted how they did
not in a book we read. - Talked about commas going around a set of something
- Read/memorized portions of “When the Frost is on the Punkin” by James
Whitcomb Riley
Health & PE
- Hiking
- Weekly yoga classes
- Weekly visit to the Flight Park for homeschool trampoline time
- Talking about health continually
- Meditation practice
- Swimming
- Read portions of an American Girl book on health and portions of Paleo
Girl together - Cooking, gardening, and many other healthy and active practices
Art & Music
• Weekly music appreciation and theory class at Yacon
• Several cartooning classes at Yacon
• Drawing a LOT of animal cartoon characters from Youtube instructions • Two fiber arts classes at Yacon
• Pottery classes biweekly
• Biweekly drum circle
• Playful Performing Arts classes
• Visited the Van Gogh & Nature exhibit at the Clark Art Museum
Spanish: Pimsleur audio CD’s for conversational Spanish
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