Addendum to school days

Ok, I feel really stupid now. I was getting so caught up in describing what I teach Alex, that I forgot half of what he is doing. Oh well, at least I caught it. I was making up a sheet to cover the next month of school work, because I need to have some method of tracking classes that he is taking without me and I realized that I had forgotten so much. So here it is:

World History - Alex said early on that he liked History, so we started with the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. I would just read him a page or two every day. We also listened to a lot of the Jim Weiss CD’s and saw a lot of historical documentaries and movies. There was a lot of western history that wasn’t taught and even the Russian history he had known was wildly skewed. We have tried to do living history as well with things like the Ren Faire etc. Nothing brings history alive like costumes and walking around pretending!

But now that Alex is more competent in English, he is taking a World History course taught for our homeschool group. There are 8 other kids in it and it is a year long course that is prep for the AP exam, but obviously, he will not be taking it. They meet for a couple of hours twice a week and it is taught more a college style seminar. So far, he seems to respond really well to that type of learning - there is no busy work, only essays that need to be written every few weeks analyzing things they have learned.

World Geography - Alex said he wanted to learn geography so I purchased the Kingfisher Guide to World Geography and we do a page every day. We started with basic things like latitude/longitude, and maps etc. Very basic middle school stuff, but now we are into studying the individual countries and have been making more progress. Amanda is doing it with him and is enjoying it as well.

Critical Thinking - I worry a lot about critical thinking obviously! I got some analogy workbooks and other puzzler type workbooks from critical thinking press and every once in a while (once a week or so) Alex will do one of the workbook pages. We started with a second grade workbook which really ticked him off but as his English has progressed, we have been able to do more. We are now in a high school work book much to his happiness.

Unit Studies - Occasionally the kids express an interest in certain subjects, so we will do short unit studies. One that was popular this summer was Greek and Roman mythology. We are currently starting one on the Pacific front of WW2. 

Ok - I think this covers it!