Ki's School Day

Connor finished is breakfast and declared to us that he was going to go write a lot because he had been thinking of a new game and had a lot of rules and things to write about it. Sounded good to me. I like when he finds things to do that fit into my idea of school, LOL. I like when my boys think of things they want to write!

After Gavin and Ki were finished with breakfast I told them I wanted them to get started on something for school. Gavin decided to write a game story like Connor. Ki got his little note planner out to see what was his list today. He read through his list and asked me about a few things. He decided to do his Language Arts first. Today he is making an 8 panel comic strip of the story he has been reading; Mitchell is Moving. He has a little science experiment in his Science book today. He loves having his daily list of things that he can see what needs to be done and do them in any order he wants. Yesterday He chose for math - 10 minutes in Miquon and 10 minutes of Dice Math. I let him use whatever he rolled on the operation dice, so he had a few simple additions, since he was using a 12 sided and an 8 sided die. He rolled a Division sign and I taught him how to do that. It’s amazing how open and willing he is to learn when he does school on his terms and chooses activities. If I had said; “O.K. Today you will be doing division in school. Get your paper and pencil and I will teach you how to do division”- that would NOT have gone over well AT ALL! But when HE chose to do dice and rolled the division on the ‘operation die’ he asked ME to help him.

Yes, sometimes I tell him what to do- like make an 8 panel comic strip- but I choose things that I KNOW he enjoys and works well in doing. I tell him to do things that he has chosen in the past and enjoys.

Ki set up the desk in is room for doing his Comic Strip. He cleared it off, got his pencils, the pencil sharpener, his book and I brought a chair in for him. He seemed to really like having his own little work area in his bedroom. It’s one of the reasons I liked this house- the nice desk area in the room and one of the reasons he chose that room. He had some of his school books in there now. He took his math in there to do.

Before he did his math I had him help me with the laundry. It was good “Brain/Body Coordination/Movement” for him. He brought the basket of wet clothes up the steps (6 steps) then carried it outside (4 steps down), then he hung about 5 small towels. After that he did an Assortment of CrissCrosses. He did Scissors, Marches and To the Back. Then set himself up at his desk.
For his second set of 15 minutes in math he chose DICE.

This is what I had for his Dice option. I had a list of 6 different types of problems. We have an assortment of dice types. Fraction dice, dice IN Dice, Triple Die, 12 sided, 10 sided, 6 sided, decimal dice, operation Dice (all the different math signs, X, +,-, DIV sign, etc)
12D X 12D =
Fract.D + FractD =
TripleD + TripleD= (3 small dice inside a large clear Die- makes a 3 digit #)
TripleDie –Double 10. (a 10 sided INSIDE a 10 sided- makes a double digit #)
.## (decimal Die) > .## =
Double 10 X 10Sided =

So he can choose which ones he wants to do by simply looking and picking, He can roll a 6 Sided and do that number problem type or he can Roll the operation Die and do a problem type that has that operation.
He loves lots of options and alternatives.

Then we read out of his Science Book; Zoolology Apologia. And worked on the new terms and did a little experiment with a large dish of water and blowing opposite ways to make a Gyre Current. Yesterday we read about different types of Aquatic movement (nektonic, benthic, sessile, plankton) and then I acted them out randomly and he had to tell me which I was doing. Then we switched and I called out movement types and he had to demonstrate them.

Connor and Gavin did their stuff on their own. They didn’t need any help today, just the occasional reminder to stay focused.