A Day of Home Learning

This past weekend, we attended a wonderful family turkey dinner hosted by my courageous cousins and their little man.  I was asked several times how home school was going and whether I had started a curriculum.  I gave my standard answer, "It's going just fine.  We always stay busy.  No, we have started no curriculum.  Really, what happens in kindergarten anyway?"  To that most people, including my family smile and nod and respond with a hesitant, "Okay."   I thought about my casual response and decided to share a week of what goes on around here.  So, here goes a week of home learning posts.  I have already written 2, but  did miss a day in between, so I will add that in now.

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Tuesday was a day of Bridges.  We are preparing for an upcoming bridge building day with our co-op.  The goal of that day is pretty much free form.  The kids have an opportunity to build a bridge using a medium of their choice and then each child will get an opportunity to share their bridge with the rest of the kids.

So, I took out a bridge book from the library and left it on the shelf for the kids to peruse at will, or during our book reading session.  We looked it over a few times and as our library borrow time was coming to an end, I suggested we try to build some model bridges.  The kids immediately had grand plans of building a bridge from our house, across the lake, all the way to the ski hill.  I recommended we start small first.

So, we looked at the book more closely.  Learned the bridge lingo: pier, footing, truss, deck...  And discovered the different types of bridges: arch, rope, pillar..  We watched a couple of You-Tube videos on bridges and bridge building contests.  Then we dug out the cardboard, tape and scissors and began building.  We built three different bridges and then tested them out with their toy cars.  We discovered that some reinforcement would be needed if cardboard was used.  We discovered that wide, low bridges were sturdier.  We discovered that painters tape does not stick very well to cardboard.  We will need duct tape for the co-op event.

We let the bridge building morning stew during the afternoon and carried on with other things, including playing with the bridges.  Upon return from our after-dinner-walk, twin2 disappeared when he should have been getting his pj's on.  I went to look for him and there he was building bridges out of lego.  So, I plopped down and built bridges with him.  We were soon joined by the rest of the kids and we continued to experiment with how to make sturdy bridges until bed time.  In fact, my husband ended up locked on the back deck fumbling with his keys trying to open the door in the dark only to discover us all crammed in the smallest room of the house building lego bridges.  We were having a blast. 

As the co-op bridge build isn't until next Friday, we will probably attempt another bridge building session again next week.  Fun, fun.