Week 16, day 1

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): I introduced a new memory verse for this week, John 10:11, and another catechism question. We read the story of how Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus.

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): P is really starting to get the hang of telling time without much help. I only need to ask her, "What is the hour? Where is the minute hand? So what time is it?" and she can figure it out pretty much by herself.

Handwriting: I let today's copywork (tracing) take care of handwriting. P is still mixing up how to form "b" and "d", so I may work on that more directly with her tomorrow.

Language Arts: We introduced a new letter today. I had put the picture dictionary away in the wrong place last time, and spent a frustrating 10 minutes scouring the bookshelf before giving up, taking up the catalogs to make our letter sheet, and finding the picture dictionary at the bottom of the pile. Ah, well. The kids are very forgiving.

P did a fantastic job of reading this week's reader. Her reading was almost fluent the first time she read it, and she really enjoyed the story itself. I'll have her continue reading this reader all week, which will help many of the words become familiar sight words, enhancing her fluency even further.

E's "school": We had a great time with this week's SSGMR activity. It involved reading a list of statements to E, and having him say "yes" or "no". For example, "The grass is red." "The sky is blue." "Plants grow in the washing machine." He thought these were hilarious, and made up several that I had to answer. P and E continued playing this game intermittently throughout the day, and I think it'll outlast the week. We also read "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", "Put Me In The Zoo", and "Mr. Brown Can Moo - Can You?" P was clearly reading some of the "sound effect" words in "Mr. Brown" before I got there, which was fun.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): P dawdled on her 5-a-day, and the timer went off before she was anywhere near done, but she didn't complain about it as much as she did last week. She was glad that I had put a measuring activity on the worksheet. I asked her to make 34 cents using as few coins as possible, but figuring out how to trade in 3 dimes and 4 pennies for a quarter, a nickel and 4 pennies was too hard for her by herself and I had to help her.

P played with the Think-It-Through tiles again, and enjoyed finding the pattern. The hard part for her isn't the actual questions in the activity book, but keeping track of the number on the tile vs. the number that is the answer. Once she's comfortable on that, I think she'll enjoy the toy even more.

Geography and/or science: Finally! P finished her "Denmark" book today. She drew and labeled a windmill, a rocky beach, a swan, some cheese, and a lot of bicycles. I talked about how, when I was an exchange student in Denmark, I had enjoyed the fact that they have separate traffic signals for bikes (allowing bikes to go straight before cars are allowed to turn right, for example). I also reminisced about the plentiful, inexpensive Brie and Havarti. "Mommy, I would like to visit Denmark one day," said E.

All right, Mom, we'll do Norway next! I'll try to make it appeal to them even more... :-)

Other: It was a beautiful day, warm and partly cloudy, so I had the kids play outside for over an hour. They rode their bikes, climbed trees (I forbade one tree to E after he slipped down, got stuck, and I had to strain to get him out, which was decidedly uncomfortable), and built a "treehouse" (several items of plant matter were actually placed in a tree during this endeavour). Meanwhile, I sat and knitted - rather, I ripped out 6 rows (of over 200 stitches each; this is a huge project) where I'd made a mistake, got all the stitches back on the needle without losing any of them, and redid 2 of the rows. I felt satisfied and productive, even though my net progress was negative, because it's going to be beautiful this way.