Fellini 5th Grade Evidence Blog

“Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.”
-William Wordsworth

Year Review

Another year of homeschooling in the books. What a journey this has been. With last year’s diagnosis, we qualified for the FES-UA scholarship. With that scholarship, we enrolled Fellini in Take Roots Forest School! I can say it has undoubtedly helped him grow in ways that I couldn’t do alone. I think the outdoor play helped with his mental health. He loved, loved forest school. He made new friends and learned so much more about the South Florida ecosystem. He even came home and asked me to teach him things he didn’t know (thank you, group work!). He woke up ready to complete his assignments with alacrity before school, and gosh, what a great change. I’m unsure if we’ll be back next year because he needs private tutoring, but I’m so grateful for his year there. He’s still very much into Pokemon and Minecraft but has found a new love for Ark, which he plays with Ethan. His love for all things Greek/Roman mythology and Rick Riordan still persists. His love for Kung Fu has waned a bit, but he is now in the black belt club and has just been promoted from Red II belt to Red III. He recently started at Mathnasium, and I’ve seen improvement. I’m so proud of him and all the work he’s done.

Subjects

Here is a list of subjects we taught this school year. Click on the button to take you to the subject and the grey arrow to bring you back.

Forest School Mathematics Language Arts Science Foreign Language Extra Curricular

Forest School

This year Fellini attended Take Roots Forest School! He loved it and made new friends, and had great experiences. It helped in ways that I couldn’t—the time spent outdoors, having other kids to play with, and the constant movement kept him happy. His handwriting improved. They learned about different Florida ecosystems at Greynolds Park, Mizell-Johnson State Park (beachside), and Big Cypress National Preserve. They did arts and crafts projects with sustainable materials. Fellini’s teacher Mr. Taylor taught him physics, and they worked on buoyancy projects at the beach. Although Forest School was a wonderful addition, we need more dedicated instruction with the core subjects, especially because he is entering middle school. I wish the program would dedicate more time to writing, reading, and math, along with all the wonderful aspects that make this school a great fit for Fellini. Here’s a link to his written schoolwork through the program.

Mathematics

We continued with Multiplication practice throughout the year with the help of Multiplication in 7 days, Mr. DeMaio multiplication songs. Towards the end of the year, we started to incorporate more Right Start to introduce new concepts. He was in Forest School, so instruction time was limited, but we made it work. He did an excellent job at being up and ready to complete work in the morning before he left for school. He never complained. He worked on multiplication, money math and fractions at forest school. Lastly, he started Mathnasium 3 times a week.

Language Arts

He finished All About Spelling Level II this year. He continued to read with his love of Percy Jackson and audiobooks. He also read The Hobbit in forest school. They kept a vocabulary notebook in forest school and kept a nature journal. We did some writing combined with science, we haven’t finished it yet, but I’ll include it so you can see what he’s working on. Next year I want him to focus on getting comfortable writing essays/reports to help him become a confident writer. He did so good the year prior with FLVS, but we had so many moments of tears and frustration, so finding the right balance is important. We also worked on grammar skills at home with sentence diagramming and basic parts of speech practice. He memorized the poem Ozymandias and discussed the meaning. This was a really great homeschool moment because when he started the poem, he was confused about what it meant, and he was so set on the fact that he could never memorize it. He then came through not only being able to memorize it but understanding the meaning.

Science

Science is his thing! He loves any experiment you put in front of him. While he got a lot of science instruction at forest school, we did a more in-depth study of Genetic Engineering at home. We started with reading The DNA Book and learned all the basics of DNA. We built a DNA structure, learned about mutations, then completed a murder mystery project. It showed them how to “splice” and compare DNA strands. We made a monster using the principles of dominant and recessive genes. We also extracted DNA from a strawberry and looked at it under a microscope. We then learned about genetic engineering and how plasmids are used to make insulin. We aren’t finished with our genetic engineering study and will continue it in August before we officially start the new school year. I can’t wait to start it and update this blog when finished. It’s gonna be a cool one! We are taking real bacteria and modifying them genetically to grow in a medium they don’t usually grow.

Foreign Language

This year Fellini took the class Vini Vidi Vici: Beginners Level Latin & Intro to Ancient Rome (Part One). His good friend Marco from forest school joined him and he loved that. He really liked the class and wanted to complete his assignments without me ever reminding him. Hoping to continue on to part II.

Extra Curricular Activities

This year he entered in Black Belt Club for Kungfu. He goes to Kungfu for 2 hours every Monday and Wednesday. He joined Chess Club and participated in a weekly drawing class on Outschool. He also learned to do indoor rock climbing and learned falconry!