5 Days of Snow = 4 Days of Extra-Schooling

Our town has been walloped by two blizzards so we've all been home and very cooped up. The kids became very sick of so much snow rather quickly, especially since it is hard to sleigh-ride in it. They did play outside for a couple of days though - a must for the classical child in my view.

As is my nature, I took the opportunity to fit in some extra-schooling. We spent maybe an hour each day on the following:

Copying Poems - we've touched on this in summer-schooling, but no where to the extent that I'd like so I dusted off a copy of The Children’s Classic Poetry Collection compiled by Nicola Baxter that I think someone gave us years ago and jumped into poetry for the week. Both my kids (DD is 10 and DS is 7) have not experienced copying great works in school unfortunately. This is one of those glaring gaps that I'm compelled to fill in. I've also taught both of them cursive (not taught at their PS) and this was an opportunity to copy poetry and practice cursive at the same time. They got to pick the poem - just a stanza or two was plenty. On the 2nd day I thought to throw in learning about the poet. We found a biography of Sir Walter Scott on-line and that lead me to getting Ivanhoe for myself at the library. DD wanted her own and it turns out there's a children's version so we put that one on hold as well.

Math review – 1 or 2 pages in the their math review books (Harcourt Family Learning series)

Independent reading for DS in French - teacher commented that he needs to spend more time reading.

Some communal reading – over a few days we read a wonderful book about liberty called Open the Door to Liberty by Anne Rockwell. It's about the life of Toussaint Louverture who led the Haitan Revolution. The story's ties with the French Revolution and American Revolution were perfect for some home history study.