Week 6, day 1

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): This week we’re learning Acts 16:31, so I added a red piece of construction paper with the reference on it to our memory verse heart. I also made up hand motions to go with it, which makes it much easier for the kids to remember it. We read the story of the Passover, and reviewed all the catechism questions so far, most of which the kids answered readily.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature).
Handwriting: Since we’re nearing the end of the workbook, today’s page covered punctuation. P had patience for tracing the periods, question marks, and exclamation points, and copying them on a new line, but not for copying the three sentences using the punctuation marks. We’ll do those tomorrow.
Language Arts: Mondays we introduce a new letter, so we browsed the picture dictionary and looked at words starting with that letter, and then made a letter page. This time, the kids wanted to be the ones who cut out the pictures from the catalogs as well as sticking them onto the page. I found this a bit frustrating, because it took a lot longer, but now that I’m not in the situation I can see that it’s good for both of them to have the fine motor practice (and the turn-taking practice). P’s copywork this week involved 4 words composed of 5 of the 6 letters we’ve covered so far, so she’ll get good practice with handwriting doing that.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did her 5-a-day perfectly. She didn't even reverse any of the numbers she wrote. We didn’t specifically do any other math activities today.
E’s “school”: This week, this consisted of presenting him with 5 circles numbered from 1 to 5, and letting him rip off pieces of paper and put the correct number of scraps of paper on each numbered circle. He found this simple. The second part “once the child is secure with the first part” was to mix up the pieces of paper and have him put them back in order. He did it readily, and told me that it was easy. I may have to add more numbers before we do it again tomorrow.
Geography and/or science: Before starting school, we read much of a book on coral reefs. At first I was sure it was way above the kids’ heads, but P wasn’t interested in hearing my summaries of what was happening in the pictures; she wanted me to read “the actual words, Mommy.” We made it over halfway through before they lost interest. After E’s “school”, we read much of a book on the Caribbean Sea. I had meant to have P make a booklet about the Caribbean Sea and some of the islands there, but after lunch the kids entertained themselves playing with paper dolls, and had such a good time I didn’t want to stop them. There’s always tomorrow.
Other: P was happy to practice piano, and she’s getting better at moving the correct finger in response to seeing the finger number printed in her music book. She wanted to move on, but I wanted her to spend at least another day working on counting AND playing the right notes. As a compromise, I sang her all the rest of the songs in the primer. It seems to be designed for a child to get through by Christmas, as the songs at the end are all Christmas-themed, but that seems unlikely to happen here. I’d rather have her know what she’s doing than move at the authors’ pre-determined pace.

Something completely other was that workers from Comcast came to fix the wire. During Hurricane Ike, over a year ago now, a tree fell across all the power wires in the back yard, stretching them out of shape and leaving them hanging at chin level across the yard. 2 of the 3 companies were diligent and responded quickly to the request to raise the wires. The initial request was made about 5 months after Ike, when my inlaws had finished helping Ari's brother and his wife repair their Galveston home. When we made plans to move here in July, my inlaws started trying in earnest to get Comcast to come and raise the remaining wire. Since we don't own a television and thus are not Comcast cable customers, they were slow and incompetent. A few times, people showed up to bury the wire (after clear communication that we wanted to have it raised) and protested that they couldn't bury it. Other times, we would be told that they certainly would come tomorrow, and nothing would happen. Or workers would show up without the proper equipment. It was mind-boggling how many ways they failed to raise the wire. Finally, my father-in-law talked to his lawyer, and suddenly they found they were able to do it after all. It took them about 20 minutes. Isn't human nature wonderful?