Week 10, day 3

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed this week's verse and catechism question, and both kids are starting to be confident with both. We read about David's friendship with Jonathan.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): E felt that the weather today was warm, while P insisted that it was cool, so we wrote both (it was about 70 degrees F). Both kids are still a bit shaky on "am" vs. "pm", but I'm sure it'll come.

Handwriting: I had a midwife appointment this morning, and I brought along the dry-erase letter cards for the kids to use during the appointment. Back at home, P did 9 pages of her Kumon numbers workbook, practicing writing all the numbers from 1 to 10 several times. When she's concentrating, she rarely reverses any numbers, but if she stops thinking very hard she reverses 3 and 6 fairly often. However, over half the time she catches herself, erases it, and does it correctly.

Language Arts: P traced her copywork and then we played a "blending game" where the kids were to sound out and blend together the letters in various 3-letter words. E did as well as P on this activity, though P is more able to do longer words than E is. We went out to IHOP for dinner tonight, and P was able to read a sign that said, "Kids eat free". She also sounded out (with some hints) words like "octopus" and "manatee" on the kid's menu activity page

Math (5-a-day, other activities): I asked P to make 30 cents using 2 coins. This took her a while, but she did it without help. I then told her that if she wanted to, she could make 30 cents a different way. Her first impulse was to use 30 pennies, but she played the "trading up game" (5 pennies become a nickel, 2 nickels become a dime) until she had 2 dimes, a nickel, and 5 pennies, which she traced. Once she was done, I showed her how addition and subtraction problems can be written in both horizontal format (with an equal sign) and vertical format (with a line beneath the problem instead of an equal sign). I'll start giving her problems in vertical format on her 5-a-days.

E's "school": I didn't review the activity from Slow & Steady, but we did read a lot of storybooks. We read "Harold and the Purple Crayon", "George Shrinks", "Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm", "The Year at Maple Hill Farm", "Madeline", and "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom".

Geography and/or science: My midwife loaned me 2 children's books about homebirth. One of them was fairly low quality and contained typos, but the other was well illustrated and well translated from the original German, and we read that one 3 times and discussed just how a mommy's body pushes a baby out. This counts as science, in my opinion.

Other: P was able to describe to me the steps of her ballet routine from memory in the car on the way to her ballet lesson. I'm looking forward to seeing the actual performance next Saturday.