Back to school...trying out Oak Meadow grade 5.

Well, winter finally showed up here in Alaska. Thank all of you in the lower 48 for sending it back to us. :)
This is what it looked like last week out my kitchen windows.

 ....and this weekend, after the storm passed. Beautiful!

 The break didn't last long. Sunday it started again. I couldn't even see out the windows.
 With all this snow and wind, it was a good week to get back into the groove of things with homeschooling. We decided to try some new curriculum this semester. We went with Oak Meadow's 5th grade U.S History and English. As most of you know, A would be in 1st grade based on her age, but we love homeschooling because we can work at her level. After exploring OM's samples on their website. Grade 5 felt like a perfect fit. This was our first week using it, and so far so good. 
I really like how this curriculum is organized. There are so many creative projects and writing assignments to chose from. This week A started on Lesson 1 (each week is it's own lesson), and she had several choices of assignments after learning more about early explorers. The choice she chose was to write a one page paper about the perils she might face sailing around the world. This was after reading about the belief in sea monsters and other things early sailors believed and feared. It asked her to then illustrate her story. She loved this assignment and really got into it.

 Her assigned reading this week from OM was a book on Columbus' journey. We also supplemented with a book that we had in our home library. We were able to explore Marco Polo's travels and learn more about early explorers.

 This week she was also studying how these early explorers navigated. This is one of her drawings representing what she learned.
For geography she labeled the 4 hemispheres.
 This past week she also finished reading Stuart Little and continued working her way through Grade 4 Teaching Textbooks for math. She will finish that up in a few weeks and then move on to grade 5.

We are also going to be trying our hand with Oak Meadow grade 5 science in the next few weeks (it's sitting in Anchorage waiting in a huge mail backup to get onto our little island). 

I will be trying to post often about what we are doing each week with Oak Meadow and document our experiences.

For now I leave you with our goals for this week.


Comments

Joyful Learner said…
Hi, I don't know if you remember me (Joyful Learner). I am happy to see that you are still writing. A friend suspects that K might be PG. It took me a long time to even come to terms on whether or not she is gifted but now I have no doubts. I know you went through gifted programs when you were younger. Do you mind sharing what was beneficial and what wasn't. K is craving more challenge because we've been very relaxed about our homeschooling. But she has no problem doing work 2-3 grades above her grade. We are reading A Wrinkle in Time with a study guide and it is relatively easy for her. Would love to explore more options. Hope to hear from you.