Due to severe budget shortfalls, our school district has cancelled school on Mondays for the 2009-2010 school year. While this is poor public policy, we've decided to make the best of a bad situation, embrace the extra family time and start a Monday School. We meet for a couple of hours Monday morning. Sophie's friends, Zach and Rylee, are joining us. We're studying history with Susan Wise Bauer's book,
The Story of the World (thanks, Carrie, for the excellent recommendation.) The kids also have picked a special topic to work on until Christmas Break. The big kids picked cooking, Abe picked wild cats and Helen picked sharks. In the coming months we'll post photos of our little class, our projects and field trips. Monday we learned about nomads and early agriculture. The kids built a shaduf in the sandbox. Their imaginations got going and they also built a mansion alongside the river with a swimming pool that the shaduf could fill.
The shaduf in the sandbox is behind Rylee's knee. Here's a photo of an actual shaduf. While shadufs represent some of the earliest agricultural technology, they are still in use today for irrigation.
The other kids drifted away when it was time to clean up, but this was the best part of the activity for Gibson. He'd probably still be outside spraying things off with the hose if Becky hadn't turned the water off.
This weekend was our ward's annual Father/Son campout. Brandan, Abe and Gibson enjoyed the campfire and sleeping outside and getting dirty. The boys played flag football Saturday morning. Gibson is either taking this game very seriously or is just seriously confused.
After the campout, Brandan took the boys to play in the river. A makeshift dam created a pool alongside the river.
Becky, Sophie and Helen had planned a girls' night on the town during the campout, but Sophie and Helen were both sick. We stayed home with a movie instead. Sophie and Helen are better now, but despite our best efforts their virus has spread to Abe, Becky and Brandan. Hopefully it stops there.
4 comments:
Yep, we all got sick this weekend too. Good thing we have that bonus Monday to get better before the kids go to school on Tuesday :).
I am very impressed with your initiative to have extra curricular curriculum at home.
We missed Gibson in the nursery today. Now I know why he was gone. Get better everyone.
Your family will have delightful memories of things they learned on Mondays at home.
Love the history lesson on Monday. I've been trying to decide what to do and this is a perfect suggestion. I'm going to call you and ask you more! Thanks for always being such an inspiring person and family. Tiffany
What an awesome idea with the Monday school. I have been trying to decide how to approach the Monday holiday (since we are not used to school any other way, but don't want to waste the day away either!). I used to do my own preschool with Nathan - I will have to get in that train of thought again. Thanks! Oh, and thanks for the tip on taking peoples comments about"having my hands full" as a compliment. I already heard it twice today...= )
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