Week 8, day 1

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We started late this morning because the kids had a dentist appointment, and then I took them to the awesome playground that is near the dentist's office, where they played until almost 11:00. This week's verse is Ephesians 2:8-9 (we may stretch it out over 2 weeks), and we read the story of Joshua and the conquest of Jericho.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Another cool day, though it was warming up by the time we made our observation. P is beginning to grasp that times before the hour are labelled with the previous hour, though the existence of 2 scales on the same clock (1-12 for hours and 00-59 for minutes) is confusing to her. I'll just keep exposing her to the concepts and see what sinks in.

Handwriting: Today's copywork counted as handwriting, and she did one page of the free phonics book. It involved exclusively circling, which doesn't count as handwriting.

Language Arts: The kids were thrilled to make another letter sheet today. I let them do the cutting again, though I trimmed the edges so the pictures would fit on the letter sheet. P wrote 2 of the labels for the items herself.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): P had a few struggles; she wrote 33 instead of 22 when asked to fill in the blank for 20, 21, __, 23, and it took her a few tries to come up with the answer to 11-3. I may have been making these a bit too hard, and should wait until she's more comfortable with numbers greater than 10. She loved tracing coins with a crayon again. I asked her to make 25 cents using 3 coins, and then using 1 coin. It was still hard for her, but that didn't diminish the fun of it, so I'll keep giving her similar activities. I made tomorrow's 5-a-day much easier.

There was a rousing lunchtime discussion on the subject of multiplying zero by any positive number. That's not the vocabulary we used to discuss it, but the concept that any number of copies of nothing is still nothing was reinforced through the game of E asking me, "Can I please have 12 nothings?" and me dumping 12 handfuls of nothing next to his plate. When he asked for 100 nothings, I dumped them in groups of 10 (making a show of gathering them up in my hands), but they didn't accumulate to any more that way. P, when asked what a million nothings were, correctly deduced that they were still nothing.

E's "school": This week's activity called for 3 sizes of embroidery hoop. As I own zero sizes of embroidery hoop, I improvised by making rings out of strips of the cardboard boxes our frozen pizza came out of on Saturday night. The idea was to emphasize the concepts of small, middle, and large, and to show that they are relative by showing that without the largest one around, the middle one is the largest, and without the smallest one around, the middle one is the smallest. E grasped this easily, so again the activity seems to have been somewhat below his level. I guess it's time to bring out the eggs (from Week 2) again!

Geography and/or science: Nothing formal today. E's imaginary Friend Lion sailed from India to South Africa and then to Egypt, so I responded that he must have gotten to know the Indian Ocean very well.

Other: I'm reading Bright Against the Storm, the first volume of Ari's epic fantasy, Karolan, aloud to Ari before we send it off to be printed. Ari pushed the kids on the swing set while I read aloud, and P was scared by the scary parts, so Ari had to stop and explain and reassure her. I insisted that they be sent inside for a page or so of the scariest/most disturbing part. Since the book is not written for a 5-year-old to understand, I'm impressed by her comprehension level. E paid no attention to the story at all. We have about 100 pages left to read, which may happen tonight if there aren't any major changes to be made. Reading aloud is a good way to discover typos, missing words, and so forth.