Week 10, day 1

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): I introduced a new memory verse, which should be fairly easy since it's so familiar: Genesis 1:1. We reviewed all the catechism questions so far, and read the story of David and Goliath.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): We had to make a new monthly calendar for November, which took a while. This month is going to be busy - for the first 2 weeks, my inlaws are out of town, so we're holding down the fort, and then Ari and I are going to take 4 nights away from the kids as a last getaway before the baby comes, and as soon as we get back we're flying to see my parents for Thanksgiving. So the last 2 weeks of November will be a break from school.

Handwriting: P wanted to do the dry-erase letter cards this time. To keep it from eating the rest of the morning, I limited her cards to letters we've covered in our language arts curriculum. E got two cards, and I helped him hold his marker properly. If you pick up a marker between thumb and forefinger when it's pointing toward you, you can then rotate it into the correct position, and E loved this. Previously, he's always wanted to pick it up in his fist, which makes tracing difficult.

Language Arts: We introduced a new letter and made a letter sheet. I hauled out the first of the Sonlight K readers, which P has read before. I first asked E if he could read it, and having heard P read it several times, he had no trouble reading all 5 words in the book (yes, it's an easy reader). I then asked P to read it, and she demonstrated that she'd memorized it and said, "This is an easy book. If a 2-year-old knew their letter sounds, they could read it." She doesn't remember how hard she had to work to read it a year ago when she was 4. However, she's only made it through the first 4 books before hitting a frustration wall, which was why I decided that the K level (redoing these readers) was a better fit for her than the 1st grade level. Hopefully by going at the recommended rate of 1 book a week, with the copywork to support her recognition of the words she encounters, she'll find all of them "easy".

Math (5-a-day, other activities): I gave P 2 related problems on her 5-a-day, 8+4 and 12-4, which she solved separately, but when I asked her to look at them, she immediately saw that they were essentially the same problem. The MOTL curriculum guide says that the concept of addition and subtraction being inverses, and there being "fact families" (e.g. 4+8, 8+4, 12-8, 12-4), is one that can only be taught when the child is maturationally ready - if they haven't reached that stage of mental maturity, you'll be banging your head against a brick wall to try to teach it. However, I guess P might be ready for it already, since she saw so easily that they were the same problem. Since I'm still working on helping her count coins up to $1 and tell time to the nearest minute, I'm not going to work on teaching "fact families" yet, but that'll certainly help when she's ready to memorize her addition and subtraction facts.

E's "school": This week's activity is fun! While P was decorating her 5-a-day, I took E downstairs and had him taste sugar (sweet), salt (salty), vinegar (sour), and cocoa powder (bitter). He rather liked the straight cocoa powder, but after several tastes suggested that I add sugar to it. A budding culinary genius?

Geography and/or science: We didn't do anything in this category, but we did read Goodnight Moon and a few poems from Poems and Prayers for the Very Young from Sonlight's P3/4 curriculum.

Other: Ari and I finished proofreading the first volume of his fantasy epic, Karolan, which will hopefully be printed and available for purchase by the end of the month. P understood enough of it as I was reading to Ari that she became troubled and needed comforting. Meanwhile, E seemed to be taking an awfully long time in the bathroom, and we found that he'd fallen asleep in the middle of the floor. He seems quite healthy, though.