One Fine Evening of Homeschooling

Spooky likes to watch TV too!

Today, even though it is Saturday, we had a great day in the world of homeschooling. Gabby had a basketball game this morning, where she made her first basket (YAY!) and played super well. She is quickly grasping the various rules and the overall feel of how a game goes. I think that we made a great choice with basketball for her because she isn't a very aggressive kid and basketball is a game where you have to go after the ball, have some physical contact, and be aggressive.

Then this afternoon she learned about place value in mathematics as well as the greater than/less than signs. I remember learning these signs by thinking of the mark as a shark mouth so that is how I explained it to Gabby. (Actually, that is how I still think of those signs, lol!) She got the concept right away and finished the whole sheet with minimal help.

Gabby also read a letter from a penpal, wrote in her journal, and finally watched a documentary with me from PBS about dogs and how they have evolved to be "Man's Best Friend". It was really cool to watch her watching this film and seeing all the different experiments that the scientists did with the dogs to show how domestication took place as well as how the dogs and humans work so well together. Gabby asked a lot of really insightful questions and seemed fascinated with how the scientific process works so we decided to do a little experimenting on our own since we have a dog.

One part of the film pointed out that in some ways dogs are smarter than chimps, our closest relative. The scientist showed that it you put a treat under a cup and present to cups to the chimp, even pointing out the correct cup, the chimp will not follow your finger to get the treat. A dog, however, will not only follow your finger, but will also use your eyes as a clue to where the treat is!! Gabby thought that this was really neat and wanted to see if Spooky was smart enough to do what the science dogs did. (I asked her what she thought would happen first and then let her prove her theory.)  After Spooky proved that she would listen and follow a pointed finger we talked about how Spooky communicates with us and seems to know how we are feeling.... all in all it was a great conversation starter and I have a feeling a lot more experiments are going to come from this film!!

So that folks was a typical day in our "homeschool"!