Book of Days

I thought I’d explain a little about the wall and how it gets put together. The wall is really something that is an extension of how we have used it in the past with additions and ideas I got from Faith and her “fridge schooling”. Thanks again Faith! :) It is this extensive only because I am loving actually doing it lol. I really enjoy looking things up and sharing them with the family. It takes me about 2-3 hours to look up, print out, put on wall etc. My two oldest are doing the French and German and Josh picks out the Word of the Week otherwise it’s all me lol -although my oldest son found a quote the other night he says he wants us to use next week :)

When I put it up I will read aloud the spelling rule, grammar rule, root word, quote, and Latin saying to Josh, as I have been trying to put it all up when he is on the computer (which is in the same room); a captive audience so to say :) The other things such as history, science, current events etc I try to talk about on the day that is appropriate. I have usually picked things in those categories that will be celebrating something on that week ie a person or event. If it’s a general thing though I’ll bring it up at any time. With the artist I also put the painting I have chosen on our computer background.

All of this is very informal. I don’t expect any writing or worksheets or anything like that. I just want to expose during the summer. An example, as I was putting this week’s wall up my oldest daughter happened to be here. After reading the spelling rule, I mentioned something about always having trouble remembering how to spell “argument” and that it doesn’t follow the rule. We got to talking about how many “exceptions to the rules” there are in English and she is finding that there are a ton in French too. Josh got in on this discussion with us. Theresa, I don’t know about any of it sinking in lol but at least they can’t say, “I never heard/saw that before!” I will also be using some of these things in our studies during our more routine school year which we start in August. I was surprised (and pleased) that last week when we first started it, Josh got very interested in the Murder of Emmett Till as some believe it was the real start of the civil rights movement. All this came about because of the poet/poem I picked (Gwendolyn Brooks because it was her birthday that week). He asked to find out more so we went looking online. We had some great discussions on all this. He even got his older sister involved talking about it. That’s the sort of thing I am hoping for with this wall. New things, review of some old things, and good discussions.

Hope that helps to explain. If not just ask away.