Welcome to our virtual home school! Heavy on nature and literature and light on all the boring stuff...
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Birds at our chalet
great blue heron (Ardeas hirodias): A big beautiful heron surprised on the road as we left our chalet for Toronto. We hear them, but see them less often. More here on this large wetlands bird.
Zoo is a ten-year-old boy in Toronto, who is fully bilingual (French), has a gifted identification, and fatigues more quickly than his peers (hence homeschooling as the only happy option at this time). My posts are not lesson plans specifically, but do contain ideas on how to tackle a unit and links to excellent resources. We place high value on incidental and inquiry-based learning and try hard to harness their power through our blog. Emphasis on skill development (not knowledge acquisition) including research, software tools, and cooking 101. Children's literature is a cornerstone: we listen to talking books, read outloud together, and read silently. Emphasis on grammatical analysis (through diagramming) and vocabulary development (through Greek and Latin morphemes). We follow Ontario Curriculum guidelines with our own materials and enrichment. We tend to spend time at either the most basic foundational or at enriched levels of study and less on the middle ground and on repetition. Emphasis on how to organize knowledge through classification systems and graphic organizers and on how to use these in support of knowledge development. Nature studies keep us cheerful and surprised.
No comments:
Post a Comment