Week 11, day 3

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed this week's verse and the 4 most recent catechism questions, and read about how Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): I think the afternoon sun shines on our thermometer, artificially increasing the temperature, because although it was fairly cool outside, the thermometer read 84 degrees F. We recorded it as cool.

Handwriting: P did half a page of the numbers workbook. Since this involved writing all the numbers from 21 to 30, I decided this was enough.

Language Arts: P traced the 4 words of the second copywork. There was a letter matching game (name the two letters out of 4 which have the same sound, for example T, F, f, r) which she found easy. I had her read the second Fun Tales book again, and she read it almost without hesitating on any of the words.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): I'm continuing to include questions that lead into discussions on place value. Since P still continues to mix up 12 and 21, I had her make 12 cents and 21 cents using only dimes and pennies. I then had her add them and count how much she had. I showed her on the board how to add 21 and 12 to come up with 33. I gave her another example (she picked 25, I picked 13, and we added them to make 38) and she grasped it easily. I demonstrated the same problem with dimes and nickels so she could see why it worked. I'll give her a few more days' practice with this concept, and then replace her basic addition questions with 2-digit addition without regrouping (for example, I won't ask her to add 29 and 38, because she wouldn't know what to do with the 17 in the ones place).

E's "school": Though this wasn't formal "school", I had him play with alphabet blocks (cubes) while P was doing her math. He independently decided to build 2x2x2 cubes, and I asked him how many he could make using the 50 blocks in the set. We're actually down to 49, so he made 6 cubes and had one left over. P asked me how much 6 eights plus one was, and I told her.

Geography and/or science: We read the "How Are Babies Made?" section of the Usborne Flip-Flap Body Book, which led to a good deal of discussion about our baby. I demonstrated to P that we could use 2-digit subtraction to find out how many weeks remain until our baby's birth, taking 39 weeks as the expected total gestation (so we wouldn't have to do any regrouping, and since that's about when both P and E were born). Since I'm at 28 weeks now, she did the subtraction in each column and came up with 11 weeks remaining. I pointed out that this is how long it's been since school started. Also, I'm satisfied that I used "science class" to introduce a brand new math concept - something that happened to me all the time at Caltech. Mwa-ha-ha-ha...

Other: While P was in ballet, E and Ari worked on their "robot" - an underwater camera case that holds a video camera so that, if you can't catch any fish, you might at least be able to get a look at them. Since it's getting toward the time of year when fish are harder to catch, the "robot" is an excellent project for the guys to work on.