1 down, 39 to go!

Weeks that is!

So we're in one week. It's been a long week. The girls took a couple of days to settle in to being told what to do etc, but by Friday it was smooth sailing (Thank you Lord!). We covered nearly every subject, mostly happily. I found that with our unit studies they were unenthusiastic until I'd explained the activity then things were good.

Monday I covered in the last post.
Tuesday we did a science experiment - making invisible ink - the experiment part was revealing it...I asked them what they thought they would need to do to make it visible.
Wednesday was some mapping skills - we did a super-quick overview of an atlas (they've used one before) and then drew their own map and labelled the different elements using symbols or colour - hence the lesson, why we use symbols and colours on maps (to show a lot of information in a small space.)
Thursday we started on Germany - we looked at the shape of the country, where it's located, the capital city and some major cities as well as the population and compared population density to Australia's (Germany is 230 people km2, Australia is 2.5 people per km2 - a little bit different!). We saw the difference as displayed on a map in our atlas so that adds to our mapping skills as well.
Friday was fun, we did painting using students acrylics. We made a colour wheel. I made them start with the primary colours then we mixed our secondary colours to put correctly between the primary ones...and I put one in the wrong place!!! The girls got it right. Then we went on to graduating from one primary colour to another - introducing hues. For instance starting with blue and adding a smidge of yellow (which would make a dark sea green) and painting a line in a shape, then adding a little more yellow (which would turn it a bit lighter, more green than blue) and painting another line in the shape and so on until they got to a bit of blue with mostly yellow then completely yellow. The results were spectacular and I got them to use all three ways of doing it (red to orange to yellow, blue to green to yellow, blue to purple to red). Our purple didn't really become what we recognise as purple really because we seemed to have quite a dark blue. I guess when we get to tints we'll be able to brighten it up and make "real" purple.

After this the girls were free for the weekend and were really glad. I was too. It had been a full-on week for me. I haven't had to do so much for a long time. I guess I was also stressed because I wasn't sure how the kids would take our new approach. This year is a lot more "school" like compared to past years, on purpose, and I didn't want them to completely rebel. I tried to make it fun and interesting for them, gave them enough breaks through the day. I also pushed where they needed it and relaxed where they needed it too. Now I need to plan next week!