Week 5, day 1

This morning, when I announced that it was time for school to begin, P responded, "Good! Doing school is like getting dessert!" This made me happy.

I decided to make a visual for our memory verses, based on Psalm 119:11. I made a large heart out of red yarn and taped it to the wall, and each verse we learn, I write the reference on a red piece of paper and tape it inside the heart. So, as the kids store up God's word in their hearts, the heart on the wall will get increasingly full of verses. (This idea was not original to me, lest you be inordinately impressed with my creativity).

This was a "letter sheet" day, and we spent a long time looking through catalogs for items beginning with our letter. We ended up finding about 8 pictures. This is one of the kids' favourite things to do - it makes Mondays special, and starting school for the week seems like a treat. P didn't want to do wet-dry-try with her handwriting letter, so she just did the workbook page. The copywork for this week was our phone number. Nobody answers the home phone in this house, as the only people who don't have one of our cell phone numbers are telemarketers, so I decided that having P learn my cell phone number would be most useful. She became upset when I asked her what the difference was between the sample 2 and her backward 2, and threw the pen, the lid, and her paper across the room. The pen lid rolled all the way under the trundle bed, so we had to pull E's bed out to get it. I informed P that, as she wasn't pregnant and I hadn't thrown the lid in the first place, it was her job to crawl under the bed and get the lid. She did that quite happily, but threw the pen again when I asked her to write the 6 (the very next number) in the way her handwriting curriculum teaches. I informed her that pen-throwing is not acceptable, and if she does it again I'll interpret it as a request for a spanking. There was no more pen-throwing. Perhaps I'd better do wet-dry-try on the copywork instead of (or in addition to) the handwriting workbook. Writing several letters or numbers at once involves a lot more remembering than practicing a single one, and we've had a lot of trouble with copywork.

E's "school" today involved turning switches on and off. We walked around the house, flicking switches, pulling cords, turning the stovetop fan on and off, and turning the dimmer switch back and forth. He loved this activity, and we may be compelled to do it every day this week. While we were doing this, Ari started mending E's bed. The kids have enjoyed jumping on it, but this caused the metal frame to bend, so that when we roll E's bed under P's bed, the bent frame scrapes long grooves into the wood floor. Ari wore out several drill bits, but got it fixed, and the kids both enjoyed watching him for a while.

E remained outside watching Ari when P decided it was too hot for her taste. I had been searching for her country booklets (Canada, USA, Texas) and she came up to me just as I unearthed a phonics workbook we'd acquired somewhere. She asked to do some of it, so I guided her through 3 pages. She then made a booklet about Mexico, featuring the flag, map, a girl in a folk-dancing dress, a Maya pyramid, a pinata (does anyone know how to make the tilde on top of the n in html?), cliff divers, a volcano, chocolate, and silver jewellery. It was much easier to do this without E around.

Tomorrow is Titmouse club, and they'll be learning about snakes. More "dessert"! It's so much fun to see them both enthusiastic about school.