The Elementary Library (and more!): January Wrap-Up

Coding and engineering...podcasts...100th day projects...sledding...

Those words sum up the past few weeks in school and at home.

In school, I am trying to balance between safety, education, and fun. Code.org has some amazing lessons and skills. Yes it teaches computer coding, but also how to solve problems, stick with something, ask for help, and more! I typically dabble in 1st grade and do maybe 2 online lessons and 1 offline lesson. This year is going to be much stronger on coding.

In Kindergarten, I just started the first online lesson and this week will add in two more units from Code.org. I am so excited to see their brains working. In addition, we tried making snowflakes out of our pattern blocks. WOW - they nailed radial symmetry naturally! It was so cool to watch.

Grade 1 is going to be starting their third online lesson this upcoming week.
Plus we explored LEGOS and reviewed Seesaw.

Second grade has a few challenging lessons in Code.org since it skips from using arrows for moving in grade 1 to words and left/right turns in grade 2. Some of my learners struggle with abstract turns and solving problems. So we took a two week break to do a Sci Show Kids engineering lesson on backscratchers. We designed on paper one week and engineered the second week. Then practiced putting them onto seesaw!

Grade 3 and 4 are working on a new unit called INVENT IT. Week 1 was thinking about a sports invention and week 2 was on exploring their idea on google. Independent google searching was a CHALLENGE. Many really do not know what to once they search on Google and needed one on one support. This week is sketch it. I am hoping to finish up exploring and get into some sketches.

Invent It Challenge

Personally, it has been a month of two new podcasts. The Bible in a Year has been eye opening. We finished Genesis, Proverbs, and Job. It is one of our before bed activities most nights. We are "behind" by about 5 episodes, but nothing crazy.

I am overall keeping up with my Catholic Pilgrim podcast where she is reading St. Faustina's Diary. This is my 10-12 minutes of quiet in the morning. My husband drives two of our children to school, so I listen while I get dressed and get ready for the day. It works Monday through Friday, but get tricky on weekends when our routine is different.

In addition, we have re-found a love of family sledding outings. We used to go out 14 years ago, but babies and busyness took over. This is great exercise and FUN!