Week 7, day 1

Today, we were invited to join a preschool co-op, affiliated with the Heritage Christian Home School group, that meets once a month. The theme was owls, and there was a Bible story, a storybook featuring owls, and a number of crafts. It took half an hour to drive each way, so that ate up our entire morning and we didn't get started with our own school until after lunch. I'm still not certain we'll do this every month, though it could be a good opportunity to get to know other homeschooling moms of preschoolers.

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): This week's memory verse is Romans 3:23. I've been making up hand motions for each verse, which means that P is able to recite the whole thing starting the first day, and E is able to do it with only minor prompting as long as I'm doing the hand motions. We read the story of Miriam and Aaron's rebellion against Moses, and I explained the words "rebellion" and "authority" to P when she questioned me.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Both kids thought it was cool, though I thought it was back to being warm again, so I let them win.

Handwriting: Today and tomorrow, P is to copy a paragraph. She had trouble making the spaces between letters within a word smaller than the spaces between words, though she improved when I pointed it out to her. She wrote 2 sentences today (about 3 words each), and will do 2 tomorrow.

Language Arts: No new letter this week! Instead, there are 2 worksheets for each day focusing on the letter A. P traced today's copywork, and then I asked her to write it from dictation. She did beautifully. She enjoyed comparing her dictation to her tracing and finding that they were exactly the same. She's been practicing sounding out and writing words - yesterday, she wrote a list of about 10 words that she was able to sound out.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): P really likes doing her 5-a-day worksheets. Today, I had asked her to make 15 cents using only 2 coins. This was a challenge for her, but by trial and error, using a variety of coins, she finally discovered that a dime and a nickel would do it. I then showed her how to tape the coins to the underside of her worksheet and colour over them with a crayon. She found that exciting, so I'll let that be the pattern on future 5-a-days.

E's "school": For this week's activity, I had cut out 3 sizes of triangles from pieces of cardboard I had saved from old cereal boxes. E was to compare the sizes and fit them into the correct cardboard shapes. I asked him how many sides the first triangle had, and he accurately counted 3. I then asked him if all triangles had 3 sides, and he didn't think so at first, but I had him count the sides on the other triangles and he came up with the correct answer. I showed him that squares, on the other hand, have 4 sides.

Geography and/or science: P made a book about Central America. She wrote the title on the front, coloured a map I drew and labelled the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and drew pictures of bananas, men digging the Panama Canal, a ship sailing through the Panama Canal, and three rain forest creatures: a hummingbird, a butterfly, and a tree frog. We looked closely at the bananas in our fruit basket and saw that they came from Guatemala. E filled his book with "banana cane", even though I explained that bananas grow on banana trees.

Other: I didn't make enough time for P to practice her current piece on piano more than once. The kids spent most of the afternoon stringing beads to make necklaces and bracelets. When E had finished a long string of beads, after I had repeatedly urged him to let me tie it for him and he had refused, he picked it up by the wrong end and beads flew all over the room. This experience, upsetting though it was, caused him to ask me more quickly to tie it off the next time. P made patterns on hers, with 5-7 elements regularly repeating. The activity was brought to a close when P accidentally knocked the entire container of beads onto the floor and it took 15 minutes to clean up. I'd reached the limit of my tolerance for picking up beads, and insisted on putting them away. Mean mom.