Start with a scale

In the morning, Ethan worked on building a scale using coins and paper. I think he saw this project in a book and wanted to try it for himself.

One thing I should point out is that Ethan finds or conceives all these projects on his own. We only provide the materials or resources. He doesn’t ask us for help very often, either. This is great, but we also feel like he would benefit from working on projects with like-minded kids.

Daily Schedule

We’d like Ethan to plan out his day so he made a schedule. Hopefully, he’ll get in the habit of scheduling his day to get things done.

English Workbook working out

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s been a challenge getting Ethan to practice language arts, but he’s more motivated to practice lately. We had some talks with him about possibly going back to his old school since they did a good job getting him up to speed with his English writing skills.

He hated the idea of going back, even though he enjoyed it there. He loves the time and freedom of being a home learner, but now understands that he needs to put in some work, too.

One cool thing that he’s been doing, since we don’t want him using devices too much, is looking up unfamiliar words in the dictionary. Yes, the dictionary!

Measuring Area

Next up was some math practice and today, it was calculating the area of an object, such as a triangle, square, rectangle and trapezoid. Dong Eun used the Korean math book to help Ethan learn and practice calculating area. One cool thing was that after Ethan learned how to do it, he taught me how after I came home.

Cookies!

While reading a book called Cookies, which teaches life lessons to children, Ethan was inspired to bake his own cookies. But since we didn’t have any eggs, him and Dong Eun experimented and made some tasty, egg free peanut butter cookies.

And he’s also been enjoying learning some lessons about good manners from Do Unto Otters, as we want him to be more aware of his behaviour when we’re out in public.

And because he’s learning about manners, he made a list of rules for when he’s out. We’re quite proud of him for always being open to learning and improving. He’s not always willing at the start, but he somehow comes around. In this case, there’s the added motivation of getting his computer and electronics privileges back.

Teaching me Area

As mentioned earlier in this post, Ethan learned about calculating area and taught me when I got home. In addition to area, we practiced multiplying with decimals.

And Dong Eun gave Ethan some additional practice with area using some problems in the Korean math book.

Writing in Runes

Ethan has been reading the Canadian Flyer books lately and in the one about vikings, he learned about Runes. We found out how to write each of our names in Runes and what each character meant, which was very cool.

Reviewing English with dad

After the math practice, Ethan and I read some of the stories in the English workbook and I also looked over the sentences he wrote. This has been a good way for us to spend time together and for me to help with his learning.

He’s been learning about sentences, specifically, subjects and predicates.

And to wrap up the day, Ethan showed me a little project he worked on today, which was building a marble track from cardboard. He’s made these before but this one was different because he hot glued the pieces together. Can’t wait to see how the marbles perform on this track.

That was a packed day! It’s amazing how much he got done in one day. We’re still not sure he’s getting enough writing and math practice, but we’ll find a way.

The post Home Learning Journal December 27, 2017 – Using What’s Available appeared first on How to Do Stuff With Ethan.