martinzoo

Today we spent more time learning about artisans from the colonial era. It was kind of a dicey day because I got lots of phone calls, I had to do one haircut, and my dog needed grooming.

So GB got homeschool on the fly. When I got spaces, he got educated. And really, I think we learned a lot.

This morning we spent about an hour on Time4Learning’s web site. I’m using a two week trial to see if I like it. So far, I have to say, I am impressed. I think there is a lot of comprehensive curriculum. We headed in to the Math section to see if it was more fun than the ALEKS web site we’ve used for the past year. We did one chapter; reading and writing HUGE numbers. Now GB completely understands how to read the really large numbers, all the way into the trillions. And he really enjoyed impressing his dad at dinner tonight by reading 46,136,720,465,302!

We worked on our Colonial unit, too. Last week we learned about Blacksmiths, Whitesmiths, and Candle Makers. Today we focused some more on some different artisans. We learned about glass blowers, and watched this video:

Then we learned about how important the Printer was to colonists. GB decided that if he lived in colonial times he would be a Town Crier because he’s such a good reader. We watched this video to learn about printing:

And then, while my little doggie calmed himself from the drama of a grooming, we went through this web site from beginning to end. GB loved it. He learned about Captain John Smith’s waterway adventures, and after each chapter he got to play an interactive game. Fun! It took us about two hours, but he didn’t really care. I don’t even think he thought of it as educational. His favorite game was the one where you compare the accuracy and quickness of a gun to a bow and arrow. The gun was slow and thorough, but the bow and arrow didn’t take nearly so long to reload. Personally, I liked the game where you tried to beat the colonists at building Jamestown. They did it in 19 days. I did it in 44 days, and GB took 98! Colonists win, hands down!