Week 19, day 1

Monday: Language Arts. Today, E woke up saying, "It's the beginning of March today!" He's thoroughly aware that his birthday is in March, so today marks another milestone in the approach of that significant day. I made a new calendar while P held the baby, who was hungry and let us all know, so the calendar looks a bit more slapdash than usual. Fortunately, much of the "review" part of school can be done from a sitting position, so I nursed B while we reviewed our memory verse and catechism, and updated the calendar. Unfortunately, E dumped out the folder containing all the names of days of the week, months of the year, weather conditions and numbers, twice. I lost my temper with him the second time. P did her math 5-a-day without too much trouble, and I had E do a "finish the sentence" activity while P finished that. I started a sentence, like "E likes..." and he filled in an appropriate ending. This was easy for him.

We got through the entire week's worth of Language Arts, including both copyworks. P was disappointed that this was another review week and we weren't doing a new letter, so I told her that we'd do one next week. I haven't looked at next week's schedule, but we'll do one whether it's scheduled or not (I'm pretty sure it will be). She read the reader fairly easily - her sight word repertoire is increasing rapidly. She's actually starting to be able to read a number of words in "real life". In church yesterday, she flipped open a pew Bible to 2 Kings 1, and read in verse 4, "So Elijah went." She found a few other individual words she could make out, as well. She also enjoys writing, and we can often figure out what she's written: "Let us lov one a nuthr fr luv cmr Gob." (still with the b/d reversal, though she often sees that she's reversed it after she's written it. This was her memory verse in CBS, and she wrote it completely from memory). This week's language arts had several games scheduled - making words by choosing 2 of 4 consonants that go with a given vowel, matching pairs of words that rhyme, and putting a stack of 10 word cards in alphabetical order. We also read the first few pages of "Tom Thumb" in a fairy tale book, and I had P describe how she thought it should end. Her guess was almost exactly correct, but the story went on to another crisis/climax, so I had her guess again, which this time was quite different from what the book said. She decided she liked the book's ending better. When P was done with the second of the 3 games, we headed outside to draw hopscotch squares with chalk on the patio. Both children enjoyed this, and each drew hopscotch squares of their own. P drew 3 different games, each with more numbers than the last - the final one had 18. E drew one as well, which turned around in a circle, and he tried to write numbers as well. We did the alphabetizing activity outside, despite the wind's attempt to blow the words out of order.

Tomorrow, I plan to start making a "worm box" for composting. We went to Target this afternoon and got a box the right size. This can be an ongoing science experience for the kids, in addition to shorter projects from the book I got on Friday.