Brainstorming with my Readers

Term 4 starts back next week for us here, and I’m batting around different ideas in my head and not making progress. So.. I’ve come here to brainstorm, I’d love some input.

For the last week of last term I tried something a little different with my dc. I guess you could call it ‘block days’ for want of a better word. On the Monday we had ‘Math Buster Monday’ where we devoted ALL of Monday to Maths, on the Tuesday we had ‘Traveling Tuesday’ where we ‘flew’ to Japan. I had all these other catchy names thought out too, Wednesday was to be ‘Wordslueth Wednesday’ (but we had a glitch as I went into labour ) Thursday was to be Time Travel Thursday, Faith and Fun on Friday and Scientriffic Saturday. No I didn’t intend on doing Science on Saturday but hey it rhymed and I can’t think where on earth to put it but I know I do need to include it. Anyway I digress.

On Math Buster Monday we read Living Math picture books and short chapters, we played some multiplication activity games, the dc worked on Sudoko puzzles, I presented the younger children with a gnomes and gnumbers lesson, the dc really enjoyed this approach even my math phobic ds13. Until I asked him/they do also do some of their workbooks just before lunch, then the day disintegrated. I have lots of ideas flowing in my head of what to include on these days (don’t you just love how the brain switches back on after the baby is born ?)

On Traveling Tuesday I had a positive response too, we read Japanese picture books and reference, we brainstormed about what we knew about Japan and I required a notebook page after our brainstorming. There are of course so many other ideas/activities to do on these days too but I needed a little more preparation. Oh and dd15 chose to do Scotland (just to be different )

So my thoughts are running like this….
Would it be too disjointed to do totally different unrelated topics every day? ie. Japan on Tuesday and Roman Britain on Thursday?
If I did it this way should I keep with Japan for the whole term on Tuesdays etc?

Should I tie these ‘theme T’ days together?
Should I have a theme running through the whole week? ie. If we did Japan then on Wordslueth Wednesday we could do haiku poems and on Thursday Japanese history and origami on Friday.

Maybe I should do Math Buster Monday but then just Geography week one, then Language Arts week two etc?

PC has suggested three weeks my old way and one week this way but frankly I’m ready for a fresh change. A whole day really gave us time, time to be relaxed, time to delve deeper, time to immerse. It’s just working out the logistics, because this will mean I need to have lots of ‘ideas up my sleeve’. And with a newborn I want gentle, relaxed and yet to know I am accomplishing something with two highschoolers in the mix.

Also I am thinking of ditching history for the term the reason is that most of my children are avid readers and therefore pick up a huge amount anyway and I need to fit science in. Science and Geography get neglected here. (Can anyone think of a catchy name for Thursday Science?)

Has anyone used/uses this approach. I’d love input, ideas. What do you think?