Week 34/35, day 4

Thursday. P's violin teacher asked her to practice 3 times daily, playing each of 3 pieces (only 4 measures each, but still) 3 times through. She practiced twice today, but I'm already seeing significant progress. After I had P and E review memory verses and update the calendar, E wandered off while P read her reader and did her copywork. She did her 5-a-day math review all by herself. 2 of the questions were games. We played card games from the Right Start Math package I bought at the homeschool convention in San Antonio. We started with "Go to the Dump", which is a variation on "Go Fish" where instead of finding pairs of identical numbers, you find pairs whose sum is 10 (for example, if you have a 6, you ask for a 4). She did this easily, which surprised and pleased me. We then played a game with an empty clock face, on which each of us took turns placing number cards from 1 to 12 and :00 to :55. P enjoyed both of these games, so I suspect we'll end up playing them frequently in future. In the afternoon, after P's second practice, I had her make a book about Nigeria. She drew a flag, coloured a map, and drew a gorilla in a rain forest, a girl carrying a bowl on her head, cacao beans, a girl in a colourful dress, and an open-air spice market. She also spontaneously wrote a "poem": "runing in the praree/ the gros wavs/ in the wind/ and mi sgrt wavs/ in the wind." (gros = grass, sgrt = skirt). She illustrated it, too. It's fun to see her writing ability grow.