Trialled a new system this week or at least that was the intention. As I went into labour on Wednesday we didn’t manage a full week.
We trialled spending a whole day on a topic, so Monday was ‘Math Buster Monday’, Tuesday was Traveling Tuesday. Wednesday was to be Word Slueth Wednesday, Thursday Time Travel Thursday and Fun and Faith Friday however it didn’t all go to plan, oh and I’ve thought of Scientriffic Saturday but somehow can’t see that working.
So on Math Buster Monday we read living math picture books and short chapters, we completed some fun multiplication activity sheets, and a gnomes and gnumbers lesson, I had many living math books and game books to browse through. The children worked on some Sudoko puzzles. I had planned on some board games but we ran out of time. All went really well, even Dominic enjoyed himself, however it all fell apart when I asked them to do some workbook lessons just before lunch. Overall very pleased with the morning, I do see the need to plan well for this approach but will continue with it next term.
Traveling Tuesday saw us in Japan, we read some picture books and DK books such as the Children Just Like Me Series, then we brainstormed information collectively about what the children knew about Japan. I then required 1 notebook page about Japan. The children enjoyed their travels although once again I can see that far more could be accomplished with some more planning. Chiara chose to participate and traveled to Scotland, she put a huge research effort in and ‘wrote’ pages.
I would like to continue with this approach in Term 4 at least with Dominic down. I just haven’t worked out the logistics yet. Is flitting from subject to subject too disjointed, should I spend a whole week on one topic or should I have a common theme running through the week to tie it together or is that too forced. Perhaps keep with separate days but say do Japan for all of Term 4 on Traveling Tuesday. Trying to decide what would work best.