ECC 2nd Edition: Day 1 Continued

Okay, hmmm, I think the schedule is going to be hard to figure out. I think the main thing is going to be starting earlier. Here goes...

We started with spelling - All About Spelling. I spend 15 minutes per kid. But, it takes my kids about 5 minutes to transition from their independent activity to spelling. So I really need to budget closer to 55 minutes for spelling. And that's okay, now that I know that. So while one was working on spelling with me, the other two were doing Math Drill and studying AWANA verses.

Next was English with the boys. So, I worked with Tigger first while Pooh did The Easy Spanish with Rabbit. My thought is he needs to understand what some Spanish words mean in English before he will be successful with Rosetta Stone. When we switched, Tigger wanted to do The Easy Spanish with Rabbit instead of Rosetta Stone because Pooh had, so I let him. Tigger does pretty well with Rosetta Stone, it just isn't his favorite. My other option is to get out my old Power Glide and let them try to do that independently. Not sure on that yet. I had originally scheduled 15 minutes each, but think I can scale that back to 10 minutes each.

After that was time for the boys to read to me. So, while one read to me the other did Typing Instructor on the computer. Pooh was a little rusty and skipping words, but I think he'll be back into it soon.

Next the boys did Math. It was a review lesson from the textbook, so no new teaching from me. I got them started, and then worked with Rabbit on her English assignment. That one was even a challenge for me. I certainly had a hard time figuring out which pronouns were being used as possessive adjectives vs. regular pronouns. I think it would have been helpful to gradually build and give a better explanation of a possessive adjective. 

While the boys continued their math work, Rabbit and I did her Physical Science experiment 1.3. After about 30 minutes of discussion Rabbit finally got the point of what "concentration" meant - it helped her to think of it as percents. We did film the experiment. That's always fun. :) The experiment had two stages. The first was to dissolve a Tums tablet in 3 different amounts of vinegar. That's this video:

Then the next part was to dissolve a Tums tablet in 3 different concentrations of vinegar. That is this video:

After reading the text in the textbook, I got the feeling we should have waited until the Tums tablets dissolved completely, but that seemed like it would have taken a really long time.

That all took until about 12:30. So we had lunch and then I did Math with Rabbit. We didn't get too far in the lesson, but she got her answers right on the problems we did do.

I think tomorrow we'll just do the Bible, Geography, and Science from ECC, and then Math and the handwriting practice. See how long that takes. Then the next day do the other things. Just kind of ease into it, you know? I may switch and do Bible, Spelling, English, Reading and Math first, and then the Geography and Science. We did that last year (substituting History for Geography), so I'm game for trying it. Just means I have to rework the schedule.

(Oh, and as I learn about this blog thing, I will probably try to make the videos just a tad smaller for streaming. Learn something new every day, ya know?)