Saturday, October 10, 2009

Week 6, day 5

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We read the story of the golden calf in the wilderness. Both kids found the idea of worshipping a golden calf, and claiming it had led the people out of Egypt, completely ridiculous. I shared with them from Psalm 135:15-18 and P repeated verses 16 and 17 almost verbatim after only one hearing.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Finally, some cooler weather. It was in the 70s and raining in the morning when we recorded the temp for our calendar, but by the kids' bedtime it was "62.5 degrees Fahrenheit" - P's confident pronouncement had Ari doubtful that she had gotten it right, but she was absolutely correct and he was impressed.

Handwriting: P finished the "h-b" page, copying "hat-bat, hug-bug, hall-ball". When she's concentrating, her handwriting is beautiful.

Language Arts: Since no specific activity was scheduled for Friday, we used my set of alphabet cookie cutters to bake alphabet sugar cookies. We used all the letters studied so far as well as the first letters of each of our names, and I made sure to cut many extra copies of "a" and "t" so we could make as many words as possible. I told P about the "ar" sound, and she was able to sound out art, arm, bar, far, and tar. For "lunch dessert", each child got to read and eat a word.

Math
(5-a-day, other activities): P did her 5-a-day well, but complained at having a coin-counting question "all the time! It's boring!" She is finding telling time to the hour easy, so I'll start introducing the half hour soon. On Monday's 5-a-day, I've switched up the coin-counting activity by asking her to figure out how to make 15 cents using only 2 coins. I'm curious about how she'll do.

Our cookie baking involved a good bit of kitchen math; I showed the kids the fractions (1/2, 1/4) on the measuring cups and spoons as well as in the recipe book, and P was able to tell me that, using a 1/4 tsp measure, we needed 2 measures of baking powder to get a 1/2 teaspoon.

In the afternoon, P asked to play with the coin-counting cards, so we played a game of "war" and one of "Go Fish!" which we didn't complete. It's harder to play "Go Fish!" when you have to look at each card to count the coins when someone asks you if you have, for example, 13 cents, which is why the kids didn't have the patience to finish the game. We moved on to playing with pattern blocks, which E used to make "bones" with a hexagon on each end joined by several squares in a row, and P used to make concentric hexagons. I hauled out a ruler and showed the kids how each side of each shape was an inch long, with the exception of the long side of the trapezoid, which was 2 inches long. I then made a few shapes and had P predict how long each side would be, and we measured to check.

E's "school": We skipped this on Friday. Cookies were much more attractive.

Geography and/or science: Nothing specifically in this category happened on Friday, but this morning (with their grandfather) we discovered mosquito larvae in the base of a bird bath, strained them into a coffee filter, and looked at them under a simple microscope that I hadn't known we had. It was a high-quality microscope, and lots of details were visible in the larvae. Of course, after being observed, the larvae were not permitted to live.

Other: P practiced her newest piece on the piano, and is starting to sound quite reasonable. She did 2 pages of the piano theory workbook (perfectly) and then asked for "the other workbook". I realized that she was asking for a first-grade level phonics book I picked up for free, and she did 5 pages of it before getting tired of it and moving on to other pursuits.

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