Week 7, day 2

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): On the way to Titmouse Club, we reviewed all the catechism questions we've done so far, and I recited all our memory verses since the kids didn't want to. P repeated each one after me. After Titmouse, we looked at the most recent catechism question, because I hadn't perfectly remembered the wording of the answer, and we read the story of the spies whose opinion was split on the subject of whether or not God was bigger than the Canaanites.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was raining when we got home from Titmouse Club, and the kids asked to play outside in the rain. I decided to let them since I wasn't sure it'd still be raining if we did school and had lunch first. They spent 30 minutes getting drenched, and we only did Bible and calendar before lunch and did the rest afterward.

Handwriting: P finished copying her paragraph today. I reminded her again about the relative sizes of spaces between letters and words, and she did well after the reminder.

Language Arts: P was to narrate the fable of the crow and the pitcher that we read last week, and she did a thorough, detailed job. We also read the story of Henny Penny, who thought the sky was falling on her head. In this version, all Henny Penny's barnyard friends are eaten by Foxy Loxy, and Henny Penny alone escapes due to a warning crow from Cocky Locky. P and E had heard "tidied up" versions of the story before, and P was distressed at the discrepancy. She was convinced that the version where Foxy Loxy gets dinner was a false version and whoever had written it needed to get their facts straight.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did well on today's 5-a-day, but it took her a long time of trial and error with coins before figuring out a way to make 11 cents using 2 or 3 coins. When she did, we repeated yesterday's activity of taping the coins under the paper and letting her crayon over the top. She then decorated all around the coin rubbings, drawing flowers and a bunny rabbit.

After our science experiments, we played Go Fish! and War with the coin cards, this time with cards containing only dimes in values from 10 cents to 1 dollar. It gave P and even E good practice counting by 10s. It often surprises me how much E has learned just from watching P. So, my 3-year-old can read 3-letter words and count by 10s to 90. He can't lose a card game gracefully, though. When his pile of cards ran out in War, he kicked the table and me, and pushed his card holder into my arm, breaking the skin and earning himself a spanking. P and I played 2 more rounds of War (which goes much more quickly in a deck of 20 cards than in a standard deck) without E while he pulled out all the K level readers and mixed them up. I was going to put them back in order myself, but P insisted on helping me sequence them, which I didn't complain about.

E's "school": He worked on putting the triangles into their frames while P was busy with handwriting and math. I gave him the challenge of making a square and a triangle with rubber bands on their pegboard, and he did this easily. He also made a rectangle on the pegboard, and discovered that it, like the square, had 4 sides.

Geography and/or science: I decided it was time to conduct more science experiments today. We dissolved sugar in boiling water and put it in a glass with strings hanging into it, on which, hopefully, rock candy will grow in the next few days. We also dissolved Epsom salts in water, put a thin layer in a pie dish, and left it to evaporate. That took a while, and while we were waiting we redid the experiment of blowing up balloons using baking soda and vinegar. Eventually I put the pie dish of Epsom salt solution into the oven and set it to warm for about 45 minutes, at the end of which beautiful crystals had formed. We talked about what happens when something dissolves (where did the sugar/ Epsom salt go?) and what happens when the solvent evaporates. (No, I didn't use the words "solvent" and "evaporate").

Other: P practiced her piano piece 3 times today. She may be almost ready to move on to the next piece.