Aboard a Fire Truck
This past week found us really enjoying the autumn season, with several nearby festivals for us to attend. We have been bringing in lots of fallen leaves to examine and try to identify the tree type by the shape of the leaf. This has been a lot of fun for all of us, since even I had forgotten a few!
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ASD Accommodations
During our lesson time, DD9 was having some challenges with the set-up of the worksheet for antonyms and synonyms. Her language delay made it difficult for her to pick the word she needed out of the box of words that included both forms. Because this became such a difficult task for her (I put a little check mark next to the words that she needed help with), the following day I accommodated her by re- configuring the task for her.
I put all of the antonyms on one page, and all of the synonyms on the back side, so that she only had to draw a line between the appropriate set. This was a MUCH easier task for her, and she had much better success. Another bonus is that after the first "failure", I kept telling her the definitions of the words she was stumped on. The next day, having a second exposure to these terms helped her remember them and become more familiar with the terms.
The original worksheet - the check marks represent the ones she needed help with!
These are the two re-done versions I made for her the following day, to much greater success!
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The Birchbark House
We finally finished the book: The Birchbark House. I have to say a little something here about the book. One tidbit that I WISH I had known before reading this book to the children is the amount of DETAILED tragedy of the book. One of the main children dies, as do several other tribe members, due to small pox. This was depicted in a very drawn out chapter with great details of the fevers, the fear the protagonist girl felt, the itching of the pox, the body shakes....all the way to the little girl holding this particular child in her arms while he took his last breath.
My children were VERY upset by this twist. I wish I had known before reading it. Having said that, they did both recover, but I'm not sure my sweet, autistic (and anxiety prone) DD9 was quite ready for such scenes.
Here's two main lesson book pages I had her do for a scene in the book where the protagonist meets two bear cubs in the woods and feeds them berries.
I did help outline the shape of the bears for her, and allowed her to then trace over my outline with her crayon to make it her very own.
These kinds of written pages rarely come out clearly. I'm very sorry, I have tried both of our cameras. I think it is the lightness with which my children press down onto paper when writing makes the words harder to pick out in photos...but you should hopefully be able to get an idea of what she's writing here.
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Ancient Rome: The Aeneid
We have been reading The Aeneid for Boys and Girls, and I feel we've probably found a good stopping point for it. It is a lengthy tome, even though it is supposed to be a condensed version of the original! Regardless, we've also watched youtube summary videos on the story, to sort of cement in our minds the correct timeline, key points, and major themes. We feel happy with the amount of information we've gathered from all of this, and are now ready to move on from The Aeneid and back to learning a bit more about Roman contributions, government, and people.
Here's the main lesson book page DS11 did as a book end to this work we've done with The Aeneid. It is based off of a drawing I found on pinterest that we used as inspiration.
It's interesting when you read an ancient book or story that you never know what might be of interest or use to your child/student. As it turned out, my 11yo was not interested in the situation with Dido and her subsequent declaration that Carthage would forevermore now be at war with Rome. You and I know it is a way to explain the Punic Wars on some level, but he really didn't find that a useful or interesting story. I guess that's what you get when your child has not entered puberty yet!
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Pre-Algebra
DS11 and I have somehow made our way to the section of our math book where pre-algebra is coming into play. I'm a little surprised to see this showing up in grade 6, but I guess we'll charge forward and see how we do. I am going to take this at a comfortable pace with him. If it becomes too heavy, we'll take a breather and do some multiplication/division/fractions/decimals work instead for a while.
We seem to be right on track to finish this entire math workbook around the Christmas break, assuming it doesn't become too laden with difficult pre-algebra. It will be the perfect time to take a long holiday break before starting in with our Geometry block.
The more I read and the more videos I watch on the Waldorf approach to Geometry in grade 6, the more excited I am to begin. I will continue to research this topic, because I really want to do it justice when we get there. Because many things we work on might stray from Traditional Waldorf (tm) a bit, I really, really, REALLY want to go "All-In Waldorf" for this Geometry block.
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As for DD9's math, we've been slowly adding some multiplication facts into our week, focusing on the factors of 1,2, and 5 for right now (even though we've seen the 3's, she's still digesting the other numbers right now). We continue to work on addition and subtraction as well. She does pretty well when it comes to addition and subtraction, but she still does not have these facts memorized rotely yet. We're working on it. It's a goal of ours for the end of the year, for sure.
Happy October!
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