Week 8, day 2

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed catechism and this week's verse on the way to Titmouse Club. Once home again, the kids explored math concepts with Cuisenaire Rods (see below) until noon, whereupon we started formal "school" by reading the story of Gideon.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It's warming up again a bit, but not uncomfortably so. P was able to grasp, with little help, that the clock read 12:10. E was bothered by the fact that it was pm even though we hadn't eaten lunch yet, as I've explained the concept of "noon" to them using lunchtime as a benchmark.

Handwriting: After lunch, P did 2 pages of the phonics workbook, but this only required circling and crossing out pictures, so it wasn't really handwriting. I did ask her to write her name at the top of the page, which she did neatly.

Language Arts: We read a story about an old woman trying to get her pig over a stile. It was fairly silly, but the kids liked the repetition. We then looked at photos from the past year or so and P chose to describe what we did last Halloween. She told the story of the day, and I wrote it on a piece of paper, printed out a copy of the relevant photo and taped it to the paper.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): On our return from Titmouse Club, the kids wanted to continue playing with Cuisenaire rods, which they'd been busy with before we left. I showed P how to represent addition facts (a light green 3 rod plus a purple 4 rod are the same length as a black 7 rod), and she played at breaking down each number from 10 to 5 into 2 or more smaller numbers. Thus, she made discoveries such as "3+3+3=9" and "2+1+2+1+2+1=9", "4+4=8" and "2+2+2+2=8". I gave her some guidance, for example giving her a 6 to start with and asking how many more she needed to make 8, but she mostly did it herself.

She did well with the easier 5-a-day today. I asked her to make 6 cents in 2 different ways, which she did with no hesitation. Again, letting her colour paper placed on top of the coins and decorate the imprints was a good decision.

E's "school": I tried him on the egg activity today, placing 5 colours of paper eggs in front of him and then removing one, and he was able to identify the missing one over half the time. He's made serious progress on this activity since I first introduced it 6 weeks ago, and I imagine if we keep doing the activity all week he'll improve still further.

Geography and/or science: The Titmouse Club theme for today was owls. The kids heard how screech owls eat cockroaches, and saw an owl feather next to a falcon feather and noticed how much softer the owl feather was, which is why owls are able to fly so silently. They made an owl craft by gluing foam beaks and eyes and real feathers to walnuts. The nature walk was unusually good today; we saw a bullfrog, a grasshopper, a walking stick insect, several turtles, spiders, and mosquito fish.

Other: I have not been good lately about asking P to practice piano. I need to schedule a consistent time every day, or it won't happen.