A little bit of this and a little bit of that…

Lately we’ve been switching things up a little bit in our homeschooling routine.  Our normal weeks go a little something like this…

Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent covering all of our core subjects, including any curriculum we are reviewing….every other Monday she has an art lesson with our favorite art teacher, Miss Moody….every Wednesday is art, creative writing and science at Pearland Homeschool Alliance with a bunch of other crazy homeschoolers …and Fridays are reserved for field trips, fun or occasionally just a little bit of nothing….those are sometimes my favorite…lol!

But lately I felt the need to interject a bit of fun and delight directed learning into her weeks….and since I’ve been hoarding educational apps for the last couple of years I thought it might be time to put those to good use!!  We’ve got them for just about every subject imaginable…yesterday she spent time studying ancient Myan cities and the Ride of Paul Revere, and learning words commonly found on the SAT…in addition to watching videos on The Happy Scientist…normally a 24/7/365 membership is $20/year, but if you hop on over to the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op, you can snag it for just $10 until February 28th!!

So that is how App/iPad Schooling days were born around our house….and then they evolved into something else…

It started with her first Stock Market class from CurrClick and Lynn Schott from The Founders Academy….

She logs into CurrClick Live for her class and follows it through Adobe Connect on her iPad…she can see the teacher and all the documents her teacher puts on the screen…she can click an icon to raise her hand….type in any questions or comments she might have.  This is a once a week class on Mondays for 4 weeks from 12:30 to 1:30.  And now she knows all about the bull and bear markets, IPO’s and dividends….how ‘bout them apples?

Next up with CurrClick are a special one day President’s Day class and a five week class entitled “Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve”….

Then we added in a little 5 week science class with a guy who puts himself inside of balloons…..

It’s for real…he’s actually in there…now, I do believe you couldn’t see his head, so he may have had to Photoshop that part in..but he’s really in a balloon….

That was from last year’s class, “Mr. Little vs. The Big Balloon”, which she didn’t attend.  This year, it fits in nicely with the history time period we are in…”Mr. Little vs. Abraham Lincoln”…a quote from the handout for the class…”By using history as our backdrop we will explore the life of Abraham Lincoln and the scientific advancements of his time and how they are relevant in our time. Your student will learn biology, the power of steam, electricity, and many other exciting things.”

And I do believe it is accomplishing exactly what I had hoped for…given her some variety in her learning….allowing her to explore topics she has a great interest in, or simply exposing her to something I’ve chosen, but know she’ll have fun with….

Mission accomplished.