We are a few days shy of having D home with us for an entire year (minus a few much appreciated weeks of summer day camp). For better or worse, we are much more involved with his education and there's no need to ask "how was your day?" or "what did you learn about in math?" because we already know.
Although it has been overwhelming at times, in many ways it has been really fun. He has so much to learn and so many topics are at a level where Jack and I are effectively experts. We've talked about fractions, wars, alphabetization and so many other things.
On the other hand when we get in to questions about physical sciences I am far from an expert and my explanations falter. He and I listened to the audio book of Who Ate the First Oyster, a popular science book answering a series questions about human history. Each question is a chapter and the explanations were at a good level for me. Examples include, "Who rode the first horse?" and "Who was the first surgeon?" as well as a chapter on smallpox and the first vaccines for it. D followed most of the explanations of how we know what we know, once we discussed them and I explained words. The book is only 210 pages and I checked the audio book out from the library about 8 times between July and December, so it was slow going, but was easy to pick up again periodically since the chapters were self-contained. Going slow and explaining thing vastly increased my comprehension and retention as well, though don't ask me to recall many numbers.
Watching his analytical skills grow is really rewarding. In the books we read aloud he is always excited to try to predict the plot, as well. Jack taught us the term "plot armor" which is quite useful, especially in kids' books.
To be fair I appreciate that his first grade teacher has done a good job with online school. She's demo'd some science experiments and he gets 4 math small groups and 4 vocab/reading/spelling small groups a week.
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