Open Ed: The Beginning

 

Education is yours to obtain. No one else can gain it for you. Wherever you are, develop a deep desire to learn.

Russell M. Nelson

After a year homeschooling with a different program, we are excited to be back with OpenEd. As mentioned in our last post, only one of our kids is using OpenEd this year, while two of them are back in public school. I also have preschooler at home that I am teaching.  As such, these blogs are going to look a little different this year. I will first report on the required classed for OpenEd- math, language arts, and science so that A1's supervising teacher does not need to read the entire blog. (But you are more than welcome to!) I will then report on the rest of his schooling- music, history, PE, etc. My preschoolers work will come next as well as family learning activities. 

Without further ado: Our First Week!

A1 did some testing with Exact Path in Math and LA so we could gage where he was at. He is doing well, 74th-79th percentile for kids his age. We will try their curriculum to see how that goes in addition to our own.

Math: We are continuing with Singapore Math. Currently working on adding decimals and converting decimals and fractions back a forth.

Language Arts: In addition to a lot of reading, we tried out the Good and the Beautiful Curriculum and quickly realized it wasn't for us. We switched to an al-a-cart type of curriculum. I found grammar rules, Utah common core standards, spelling words, etc. We will incorporate these into creative writing projects. To start this week we did a review of basic sentence structure. I told A1 the shortest sentence in the English language that has both a subject and predicate is: I am. To which he immediately replied, "I'm."

In addition to a fun sense of humor, A1 is also very creative. This week he wrote a book, A Full Moon Ghost.

Science: During the summer we experimented with what solution cleaned a penny the best. We had water, vinegar, salt, rootbeer, ketchup, and vinegar/salt combo. The kids laughed over putting a penny in ketchup.

They were surprised to find the ketchup was one of the best cleaners for pennies along with the vinegar/salt combo. We discussed the ingredients of ketchup- salt and vinegar were both in it.

Other sub categories of STEAM we did this week were:

Exploring Technology: A1 is learning more about 3D printing and exploring how to build stronger prints.  He has recently been fascinated with printing optical illusions. 

 

Home Economic: To celebrate the beginning of school we made one of his favorite candies- Tootsie Rolls. Our first ones didn't turn out right and A1 learned how to experiment with different ingredients to create something new.

Trust me,
the homemade version looks better rolled into balls than logs

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History- We will be studying US history this year. To kick us off we had a fun game of Risk (WarZone) where we took over the United States.

We also went to the cemetery and look at how headstones can show a lot of history and tell stories from our past. We saw headstones of pioneers, veterans, babies, and some engraved with a final message.

We looked up how you could safely read a worn headstone. We learned even making a rubbing can wear the stone down and the best way to read a worn headstone is to shine a flashlight sideways on it. Then take a picture of it. Afterwards, you can play with settings on your phone to help the words appear more clear. This is best done in the early morning or evening when the sun is not directly shining on the headstone.

For PE this week, we tried to get out every morning and evening and good for a bike ride or walk. We also lifted weights, did push ups, dead hangs, and more.

For art, A1 found a craft book and has been making animals out of various supplies we have. He created his younger sister an owl mobile for her bed.

We haven't forgotten A2. She loves to write as was proud she wrote a two, too, during A1's math time.

She also enjoyed doing puzzles, sensory sand, and a little music time.

We attended a special story hour at the library, where a park ranger read books to the kids.

In addition to weekly story hour, this year we are doing 1,000 books before Kindergarten. Here's our progress so far: