Applied Knowledge, Notebooking, and Mickey Mouse

Above is George's piece from this week's art class at Sawtooth. George shared his brother's shortened school week this week, in large part because George's teacher (i.e. yours truly) spent a full day and a half down with the stomach bug that's going around. Joy. Thankfully neither child caught it.

We are embarking on a new method of organizing our work: notebooking. We will tweak the concept however, and instead of having a SCIENCE notebook and a READING notebook and a HORRIBLE MATHS notebook, etc., we will wrap those bits of knowledge into one large, EVERYTHING WONDERFUL IN THE WORLD notebook.

This will enable me to sneak more math in (a la hiding veggies in  lasagna), by hiding algebraic and geometric concepts in more preferred topics, like history. "On this page is shown a bar graph of Revolutionary Companies by number of soldiers", for example. Or "Romanesque arches, can be measured thusly."

Will this be more work for me? Probably, hahaha. Generally I plan about two hours in the evening, and at least at the onset, until George grabs hold and runs with it himself, I'll probably plan closer to three hours a clip.

But in the long run, I feel like this holistic method will be better for George, as it more closely aligns with how applied knowledge in the real world works. And ultimately the real world is what I want George to be able to navigate smoothly.