Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed John 3:16 and read about the handwriting on the wall.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): This whole telling time thing is a little beyond P, and I think I succeeded in intimidating her by asking her to do it on her 5-a-day a few days ago, because she seems confused now. When we record the temperature and the time the temp was taken, I go through how we figure out the time step by step. (Where is the hour hand pointing? What hour is it? Where is the minute hand pointing? Let's count the minutes together - do you want to count by 5s or by 1s?). If I leave out any of the hand holding, she gets upset. Clearly, this means that she's not ready for me to leave any of the steps out, so I need to be reliable to help her with all of them for the next little while.
Handwriting: I gave P a page of "a"s to copy, since she was tempted to do them wrong on Tuesday. She completed all the lowercase "a"s and they looked good.
Language Arts: P traced the second sentence for the week, re-read the reader, and we played a game where for each letter we've learned, the kids took turns naming a food that started with that letter. E really enjoyed coming up with different kinds of meat: turtle meat, alligator meat, penguin meat, fox meat, etc. I tried to get him to identify foods he's actually tasted, but at least he proved that he's fully grasped the concept.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P got through her 5-a-day slowly, after a few threats about how if she pretended to be asleep instead, I'd have to assume that she was sick and couldn't go to ballet. This problem wasn't restricted to math; she tried it repeatedly during just about every subject. I didn't let her get away with it, and she did all her work well once she actually did it.
E's "school": This didn't happen. It was too cloudy to look at our shadows outside, which was the main other thing from SSGMR I'd planned, and I left to take P to ballet before we had time to read any storybooks. Perhaps I ought to switch around our schedule some, by putting a read-aloud between handwriting and language arts or before math, to give him more direct attention. I'll mull this over and perhaps try it next week.
Geography and/or science: We looked at my picture book about Bamble, a region in Norway. The book is full of beautiful pictures, mainly featuring seaside towns and winter scenes. I explained what fjords were by drawing an outline of Norway on our whiteboard, and then erasing bits of the coastline and drawing jagged inlets into each erased bit. It was a bit more dramatic than the real map, but the kids readily saw that Norway has a lot of coastline because of the fjords.
When I first received this book in 2001, I was amazed to see that one of the pictures was of an area whose name was the same as my mother's maiden name. The picture's caption stated that the land in that area had been farmed for over 5000 years. Never having lived more than 4 1/2 years in one place (though I have now lived in the USA for almost 8 straight years, which explains why I'm getting stir-crazy), I found it incredible to have a photo of a place where I have 5000-year-old roots. I tried to explain to the kids why I liked this photo so much, but they were way too young to grasp the concept of "rootedness". I guess it is kind of abstract.
Other: I took P to ballet while Ari and E used their underwater camera housing to film sunfish eating bacon. They got some awesome close-up footage of several sunfish stripping their bait wire clean. I guess this counts as "science".
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Week 13, day 2
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed about 10 of the most recent catechism questions and the memory verse, and read about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Today, the kids didn't argue that it was cold, and were satisfied with recording it as cool and cloudy with a bit of rain. The time was 11:55, and I showed P how we could figure that out on the clock, but I think I confused her.
Handwriting: Mom and Dad, expect adorable Christmas cards in the mail, the one from P with several sentences and the one from E with his own tracing of his name. P started making her lowercase "a" in a strange way, so I nipped it in the bud by having her do "wet-dry-try" on the chalkboard.
Language Arts: I asked P to write yesterday's copywork from dictation, which she did well when she was trying. I became frustrated with her when I reminded her to leave a space between words, and she started the second word at the very end of the line (leaving most of the line as a space). I made her erase it and do it sensibly - I think she just wanted to get a rise out of me. She read the reader beautifully. The "creative expression" activity for today was for the child to make up words to a tune they know already, but P can't carry a tune yet. I helped her and we sang the list of her favourite colours (from most to least beloved) to the approximate tune of "Mary Had A Little Lamb": "Pink and purple, blue and green, yellow, orange and red" twice.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): Before Titmouse Club, I let the kids watch the math video, covering addition, subtraction, and comparisons. Later in the day, P compared all the braid bracelets she's made, deciding which pairs were the same, similar, and different.
I put a clock reading 8:05 on P's 5-a-day, but it took a lot of prompting and eventually telling her before she figured it out, so that was premature. I'll keep reviewing hour and half hour, and work on more direct instruction for the next few days to try and help her grasp it. I showed her how to tell time to the nearest minute after she was done with the 5-a-day, and she seemed to grasp it again, like yesterday, but it's clear I need to let her keep practicing with lots of input from me before she can do it by herself.
E's "school": We did the "shadow play" activity today. It was cloudy anyway, so we closed the curtains and turned off the lights, and saw what kinds of shadows various toys cast when they were between a flashlight and the wall. I showed them how the shadow got bigger when the toy was closer to the flashlight, because it was blocking more of the light. If it's sunny enough later in the week, we'll look at the sizes of our shadows outside at various times of day.
We read "The Gingerbread Man" from The Tall Book of Nursery Tales and a few more poems. P was amused by the poem "Brooms", which described trees on a windy day as brooms sweeping the sky until it's blue again.
Geography and/or science: Titmouse Club today featured birds, the various things they eat, and the places they live. The kids spread peanut butter on pine cones and rolled them in seeds to make bird feeders. We haven't hung those up yet.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Today, the kids didn't argue that it was cold, and were satisfied with recording it as cool and cloudy with a bit of rain. The time was 11:55, and I showed P how we could figure that out on the clock, but I think I confused her.
Handwriting: Mom and Dad, expect adorable Christmas cards in the mail, the one from P with several sentences and the one from E with his own tracing of his name. P started making her lowercase "a" in a strange way, so I nipped it in the bud by having her do "wet-dry-try" on the chalkboard.
Language Arts: I asked P to write yesterday's copywork from dictation, which she did well when she was trying. I became frustrated with her when I reminded her to leave a space between words, and she started the second word at the very end of the line (leaving most of the line as a space). I made her erase it and do it sensibly - I think she just wanted to get a rise out of me. She read the reader beautifully. The "creative expression" activity for today was for the child to make up words to a tune they know already, but P can't carry a tune yet. I helped her and we sang the list of her favourite colours (from most to least beloved) to the approximate tune of "Mary Had A Little Lamb": "Pink and purple, blue and green, yellow, orange and red" twice.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): Before Titmouse Club, I let the kids watch the math video, covering addition, subtraction, and comparisons. Later in the day, P compared all the braid bracelets she's made, deciding which pairs were the same, similar, and different.
I put a clock reading 8:05 on P's 5-a-day, but it took a lot of prompting and eventually telling her before she figured it out, so that was premature. I'll keep reviewing hour and half hour, and work on more direct instruction for the next few days to try and help her grasp it. I showed her how to tell time to the nearest minute after she was done with the 5-a-day, and she seemed to grasp it again, like yesterday, but it's clear I need to let her keep practicing with lots of input from me before she can do it by herself.
E's "school": We did the "shadow play" activity today. It was cloudy anyway, so we closed the curtains and turned off the lights, and saw what kinds of shadows various toys cast when they were between a flashlight and the wall. I showed them how the shadow got bigger when the toy was closer to the flashlight, because it was blocking more of the light. If it's sunny enough later in the week, we'll look at the sizes of our shadows outside at various times of day.
We read "The Gingerbread Man" from The Tall Book of Nursery Tales and a few more poems. P was amused by the poem "Brooms", which described trees on a windy day as brooms sweeping the sky until it's blue again.
Geography and/or science: Titmouse Club today featured birds, the various things they eat, and the places they live. The kids spread peanut butter on pine cones and rolled them in seeds to make bird feeders. We haven't hung those up yet.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Week 13, day 1
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): I introduced a new memory verse for this week, John 3:16, and we discussed the meanings of "perish" and "eternal". We also read about the prophet Jeremiah, and how King Jehoiakim burned Jeremiah's scroll.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): The kids thought it was cold, although they were both in short sleeves and didn't instantly start shivering. We compromised with "cool/cold"; it was about 58 degrees F. P's ability to read the thermometer is really useful sometimes: I can ask her to tell me the temperature while I'm getting dressed without having to go into their room and look at the thermometer myself.
Handwriting: Today, I thought it was time for something completely different. I had P and E both make Christmas cards for friends of theirs back in PA. P wrote a Christmas greeting neatly inside the card. I intend to have her do this each day this week, so, family members reading this, you ought to receive one in the mail sometime before Christmas.
Language Arts: We played a matching game where the children took turns picking up pictures and placing them on the letter they started with. P found this easy, and E struggled to find the right letters sometimes. We'll play it again, probably, on Friday, and see how it goes. E has no trouble hearing what the starting sound is ("phonemic awareness"), just with identifying the shape of the letter - he mixes up F, T, and I.
P did her copywork happily, and I had her read the 4th Sonlight reader. She was really amused by the misadventures of the sap-sipping rat. I enjoyed seeing her laugh after each sentence she decoded. This is the last of the readers that she's looked at before, and I think last time we tried (over the summer) the process of decoding was still so difficult for her that she didn't really grasp the storyline. It's neat to see how much she's progressed since then, even though she doesn't have any new quantifiable skills - she's just more comfortable with the skills she already had a year ago.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P has really grasped the concept of place value, as far as I can tell. She had no problem telling which was greater, 45 or 54. She is easily able to make a given amount of money using dimes and pennies (in this case, 41 cents: 4 dimes, 1 penny). She's starting to get comfortable with using quarters as well, in this case using a quarter, a dime, and 6 pennies to make 41 cents a different way. She enjoys it when I give her a money problem whose solution involves lots of coins, because then she can arrange them into a "flower" shape before tracing them. Later in the day, I gave her a little direct instruction in telling time, because she's really solid on hours and half-hours and I want to move on to intervals of 5 minutes. She grasped it pretty well, and I'm going to start putting that sort of problem on her 5-a-days.
E's "school": We read "Crictor" and "Pete's A Pizza" from the Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics, as well as a few poems. Tomorrow I'm going to try this week's activity from SSGMR, which involves playing with shadows cast by objects held in front of a flashlight.
Geography and/or science: Mom, you'll be pleased - we started looking at Scandinavia. We identified Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Greenland on the Markable Map, and the children took turns tracing them (E traced Iceland and Greenland, where there's more margin for error). P wondered whether Greenland was really green, and I assured her that it was not - when I was an exchange student in Denmark, a fellow student told me of her time in Greenland and described her excitement, after a few months of being there, at finding a bit of green lichen on a rock. Once she was back in Denmark, she was looking at her pictures and couldn't figure out why she'd taken so many photos of the same grayish green bit of lichen! P thought probably Iceland was a more honest name than Greenland. Does anyone know why Greenland has that name? I plan on going to the library on Wednesday and getting kids' books on the various Scandinavian countries; at this point I have a general textbook on Denmark which is pretty dense and whose photos would take a lot of explaning, and a small book on Bamble, a region in Norway where I visited relatives in 2001 (also while I was an exchange student). I haven't showed these to the kids yet, though we may look at the Bamble one tomorrow.
Other: I made dough for Norwegian Christmas cookies with E's "help" (he was excluded a few times for unauthorized operation of the food processor), and plan on assembling them tomorrow.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): The kids thought it was cold, although they were both in short sleeves and didn't instantly start shivering. We compromised with "cool/cold"; it was about 58 degrees F. P's ability to read the thermometer is really useful sometimes: I can ask her to tell me the temperature while I'm getting dressed without having to go into their room and look at the thermometer myself.
Handwriting: Today, I thought it was time for something completely different. I had P and E both make Christmas cards for friends of theirs back in PA. P wrote a Christmas greeting neatly inside the card. I intend to have her do this each day this week, so, family members reading this, you ought to receive one in the mail sometime before Christmas.
Language Arts: We played a matching game where the children took turns picking up pictures and placing them on the letter they started with. P found this easy, and E struggled to find the right letters sometimes. We'll play it again, probably, on Friday, and see how it goes. E has no trouble hearing what the starting sound is ("phonemic awareness"), just with identifying the shape of the letter - he mixes up F, T, and I.
P did her copywork happily, and I had her read the 4th Sonlight reader. She was really amused by the misadventures of the sap-sipping rat. I enjoyed seeing her laugh after each sentence she decoded. This is the last of the readers that she's looked at before, and I think last time we tried (over the summer) the process of decoding was still so difficult for her that she didn't really grasp the storyline. It's neat to see how much she's progressed since then, even though she doesn't have any new quantifiable skills - she's just more comfortable with the skills she already had a year ago.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P has really grasped the concept of place value, as far as I can tell. She had no problem telling which was greater, 45 or 54. She is easily able to make a given amount of money using dimes and pennies (in this case, 41 cents: 4 dimes, 1 penny). She's starting to get comfortable with using quarters as well, in this case using a quarter, a dime, and 6 pennies to make 41 cents a different way. She enjoys it when I give her a money problem whose solution involves lots of coins, because then she can arrange them into a "flower" shape before tracing them. Later in the day, I gave her a little direct instruction in telling time, because she's really solid on hours and half-hours and I want to move on to intervals of 5 minutes. She grasped it pretty well, and I'm going to start putting that sort of problem on her 5-a-days.
E's "school": We read "Crictor" and "Pete's A Pizza" from the Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics, as well as a few poems. Tomorrow I'm going to try this week's activity from SSGMR, which involves playing with shadows cast by objects held in front of a flashlight.
Geography and/or science: Mom, you'll be pleased - we started looking at Scandinavia. We identified Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Greenland on the Markable Map, and the children took turns tracing them (E traced Iceland and Greenland, where there's more margin for error). P wondered whether Greenland was really green, and I assured her that it was not - when I was an exchange student in Denmark, a fellow student told me of her time in Greenland and described her excitement, after a few months of being there, at finding a bit of green lichen on a rock. Once she was back in Denmark, she was looking at her pictures and couldn't figure out why she'd taken so many photos of the same grayish green bit of lichen! P thought probably Iceland was a more honest name than Greenland. Does anyone know why Greenland has that name? I plan on going to the library on Wednesday and getting kids' books on the various Scandinavian countries; at this point I have a general textbook on Denmark which is pretty dense and whose photos would take a lot of explaning, and a small book on Bamble, a region in Norway where I visited relatives in 2001 (also while I was an exchange student). I haven't showed these to the kids yet, though we may look at the Bamble one tomorrow.
Other: I made dough for Norwegian Christmas cookies with E's "help" (he was excluded a few times for unauthorized operation of the food processor), and plan on assembling them tomorrow.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Week 12, day 4
It did snow! This influenced our choices for the day, our ability to focus, etc.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed a couple of memory verses, and read about Isaiah. This story wasn't as coherently a story as most of the ones in our Bible storybook, but P seemed to grasp quite a bit of it (E sat on the floor in a box / with a box on his head, so he was probably listening intently but it didn't look like it).
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Cold! Yes! It spat a bit of snow before we went out and recorded the temperature, but then turned to big fat flakes for most of the rest of the day, and they even stuck a little. This morning, the shaded spaces still have little bits of white left. Huzzah! This morning, the kids enjoyed running outside and finding ice in the bird feeder and finding that the drips on their jungle gym were ice, not water.
What do public school teachers do when white stuff comes out of the sky? It was hard enough getting ONE child to focus occasionally - what about 30 children? (I let P get up and look out the window, at least, between each activity we did, on condition that she eventually sit down and do the next thing).
Handwriting: I remembered that I had a booklet of handwriting practice pages. They don't go with our handwriting curriculum, but they're close enough that we can use them to good effect. P chose to do an "I" page instead of dry-erase letter cards.
Language Arts: We finished the week's letter review worksheets and dictation, and P read the 3rd reader. E wanted to read too, and got through the first 2 pages before his atention span expired. I told him, "You're 3, you really don't have to be able to read yet." He threw himself to the floor and sobbed, "But I WAAAAANT to!" "Okay, then, we'll keep working on it." We also played a "replace the letter" game - given a word like "pit", have one kid read it, then replace the i with an a and have the other kid read it. E did pretty well with this, though he still struggles to remember what sound "i" makes, and P did perfectly.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P finished this up as quickly as she could, in order to be able to go outside and play. She did it accurately, but her neatness suffered toward the end. That was basically it for school.
E's "school": He and P learned all about white frozen bits of H2O falling out of the sky. Any suggestion of anything else would have earned me disdain.
Geography and/or science: Water freezes. This is awesome. We talked about the difference between TX and PA, and how there was no reason to hope that the snow would reach above E's head (something he kept suggesting).
Other: We went and bought a Christmas tree, and decorated it. I let the kids cut out snowflakes from paper, which they taped up in the windows. Ever since I learned how to fold paper into sixths instead of just quarters, my and my kids' snowflakes have looked awesome.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed a couple of memory verses, and read about Isaiah. This story wasn't as coherently a story as most of the ones in our Bible storybook, but P seemed to grasp quite a bit of it (E sat on the floor in a box / with a box on his head, so he was probably listening intently but it didn't look like it).
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Cold! Yes! It spat a bit of snow before we went out and recorded the temperature, but then turned to big fat flakes for most of the rest of the day, and they even stuck a little. This morning, the shaded spaces still have little bits of white left. Huzzah! This morning, the kids enjoyed running outside and finding ice in the bird feeder and finding that the drips on their jungle gym were ice, not water.
What do public school teachers do when white stuff comes out of the sky? It was hard enough getting ONE child to focus occasionally - what about 30 children? (I let P get up and look out the window, at least, between each activity we did, on condition that she eventually sit down and do the next thing).
Handwriting: I remembered that I had a booklet of handwriting practice pages. They don't go with our handwriting curriculum, but they're close enough that we can use them to good effect. P chose to do an "I" page instead of dry-erase letter cards.
Language Arts: We finished the week's letter review worksheets and dictation, and P read the 3rd reader. E wanted to read too, and got through the first 2 pages before his atention span expired. I told him, "You're 3, you really don't have to be able to read yet." He threw himself to the floor and sobbed, "But I WAAAAANT to!" "Okay, then, we'll keep working on it." We also played a "replace the letter" game - given a word like "pit", have one kid read it, then replace the i with an a and have the other kid read it. E did pretty well with this, though he still struggles to remember what sound "i" makes, and P did perfectly.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P finished this up as quickly as she could, in order to be able to go outside and play. She did it accurately, but her neatness suffered toward the end. That was basically it for school.
E's "school": He and P learned all about white frozen bits of H2O falling out of the sky. Any suggestion of anything else would have earned me disdain.
Geography and/or science: Water freezes. This is awesome. We talked about the difference between TX and PA, and how there was no reason to hope that the snow would reach above E's head (something he kept suggesting).
Other: We went and bought a Christmas tree, and decorated it. I let the kids cut out snowflakes from paper, which they taped up in the windows. Ever since I learned how to fold paper into sixths instead of just quarters, my and my kids' snowflakes have looked awesome.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Week 12, day 3
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed the most recent catechsim questions, because the kids had some trouble with these yesterday. We also read the second half of the story of Esther.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was definitely not cold by the time we checked the temperature, but the kids disagreed with me. However, tomorrow it is supposed to snow (yes, snow, in Houston), so perhaps this will give them some needed perspective. :-)
Handwriting: I had the kids use the dry-erase letter cards again today. I gave P all 10 letters we've covered in the language arts curriculum, and I gave E 4 of them. He was upset over not being given as many as P, so while she did her language arts worksheets I gave him the other 6 to trace. He got through 4 1/2 of those before becoming sidetracked.
Language Arts: Not much of interest here, there were worksheets and copywork, and P re-read the 2nd and 3rd readers. She is gaining fluency, and reads all the words accurately and with some measure of understanding. It seems like she enjoys re-reading the readers while she's doing it, even though she protests beforehand.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): I'm really in love with Math On The Level. P says that math is her favourite subject, and I use the promise of her 5-a-day to motivate her to finish her language arts. She complained at the fact that, when a problem is written in vertical format, the equal sign consists of a single long horizontal line beneath the problem instead of 2 short horizontal lines next to the problem. She placed a normal equal sign next to her answer for one of the problems, and added a long horizontal line beneath the original to make it look more like an equal sign on another problem. Sorry, kid, notation can be nonsensical at every level of math.
E's "school": E played with 2 puzzles while P was doing her seatwork, and I can see him making progress in his ability to put them together. His 15-piece Bob the Builder puzzle he completed without help, and I only gave him a few suggestions for his 25-piece Nemo puzzle.
We read "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse" from the Tall Book of Nursery Tales, and a few poems.
Geography and/or science: We didn't do any of this, unless you count starting to bake a Christmas fruitcake (note to all you Americans out there: you only groaned because your excuse for fruitcake is not worthy of the name. You need to try my great-grandmother's recipe before you get to make another comment on the subject of fruitcake: it is exquisite). We added baking soda to a pot full of boiled raisins, currants, sultanas, and butter, and watched it fizz. Now it gets to sit overnight, and we'll bake it tomorrow. Ari also built a fire with them, so they got to see how you need to light the smaller bits of wood before there's enough energy to get the bigger logs to light.
Other: Nothing else academic happened. Not having had Monday to get things rolling, this entire week has felt like catch-up and only the "3 R's" and Bible have happened consistently.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was definitely not cold by the time we checked the temperature, but the kids disagreed with me. However, tomorrow it is supposed to snow (yes, snow, in Houston), so perhaps this will give them some needed perspective. :-)
Handwriting: I had the kids use the dry-erase letter cards again today. I gave P all 10 letters we've covered in the language arts curriculum, and I gave E 4 of them. He was upset over not being given as many as P, so while she did her language arts worksheets I gave him the other 6 to trace. He got through 4 1/2 of those before becoming sidetracked.
Language Arts: Not much of interest here, there were worksheets and copywork, and P re-read the 2nd and 3rd readers. She is gaining fluency, and reads all the words accurately and with some measure of understanding. It seems like she enjoys re-reading the readers while she's doing it, even though she protests beforehand.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): I'm really in love with Math On The Level. P says that math is her favourite subject, and I use the promise of her 5-a-day to motivate her to finish her language arts. She complained at the fact that, when a problem is written in vertical format, the equal sign consists of a single long horizontal line beneath the problem instead of 2 short horizontal lines next to the problem. She placed a normal equal sign next to her answer for one of the problems, and added a long horizontal line beneath the original to make it look more like an equal sign on another problem. Sorry, kid, notation can be nonsensical at every level of math.
E's "school": E played with 2 puzzles while P was doing her seatwork, and I can see him making progress in his ability to put them together. His 15-piece Bob the Builder puzzle he completed without help, and I only gave him a few suggestions for his 25-piece Nemo puzzle.
We read "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse" from the Tall Book of Nursery Tales, and a few poems.
Geography and/or science: We didn't do any of this, unless you count starting to bake a Christmas fruitcake (note to all you Americans out there: you only groaned because your excuse for fruitcake is not worthy of the name. You need to try my great-grandmother's recipe before you get to make another comment on the subject of fruitcake: it is exquisite). We added baking soda to a pot full of boiled raisins, currants, sultanas, and butter, and watched it fizz. Now it gets to sit overnight, and we'll bake it tomorrow. Ari also built a fire with them, so they got to see how you need to light the smaller bits of wood before there's enough energy to get the bigger logs to light.
Other: Nothing else academic happened. Not having had Monday to get things rolling, this entire week has felt like catch-up and only the "3 R's" and Bible have happened consistently.
Week 12, day 2
Yesterday (Wednesday) was packed brim-full. I had a midwife appointment in the morning, followed by Arabic Bible study, and after coming home and doing school with the kids, I took P to ballet and had time for a quick bowl of soup before dashing off to the rehearsal for the Houston Symphony Orchestra Chorus's Christmas Pops concert. Needless to say, there was no time in there for updating the blog.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed the catechism to date, and read the first part of the story of Esther (how she became queen).
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Again, the kids thought it was cold, and I thought it was cool. The temperature was in the upper 50s.
Handwriting: I had P do a page of the phonics workbook, and write her name neatly at the top. Her dictation in language arts also counts as handwriting.
Language Arts: In addition to the vowel worksheet, there was a "chore description" activity. P chose instead to describe how to braid a bracelet, which she did fairly well. When I read her description back to her, she saw an obvious hole in it and filled it in.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): We only just had time for this, but P did her 5-a-day well. We didn't have time to finish the last question (I asked her to make 30 cents using at least one quarter, which she did, but there was no time for her to make 30 cents another way, because we needed to go to ballet).
E's "school": Nope. Didn't happen.
Geography and/or science: Nor this.
Other: Because of so much other going on.
I've been meaning to insert a musing on the value of learning to read at the same time as your kid. I'm thinking here of my studies of Arabic. I've known most of the letter sounds in Arabic since I was 13, but fluency is hard to come by. When I'm at Arabic Bible study and the ladies take turns reading aloud a few verses each, I feel extremely stupid. I force all my powers of concentration into pronouncing the words on the page, but there is no mental power left over for parsing the meaning of what I just read. The ladies are all supportive and encouraging, but I can tell that it's frustrating for them to hear me going so slowly. Suddenly, I have sympathy for all the kids who were in the "other" reading groups, and for the adults who stumble over words when called on to read aloud. (Since I've been reading fluently since I was 5, I'm afraid I always felt mild disdain for people who couldn't). I know that, with practice, my skills will improve. I'm also sure that it makes me a better teacher for P and E. The immediacy of this experience - being faced with a page full of squiggles, and pouring all my energy into turning the squiggles into words - helps me grasp what it's like for a small child doing this for the first time. So, homeschool moms and kindergarten teachers, let's hear it for learning to read a phonetic language that isn't your own, for a deeper understanding of what it's like for your kids.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed the catechism to date, and read the first part of the story of Esther (how she became queen).
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Again, the kids thought it was cold, and I thought it was cool. The temperature was in the upper 50s.
Handwriting: I had P do a page of the phonics workbook, and write her name neatly at the top. Her dictation in language arts also counts as handwriting.
Language Arts: In addition to the vowel worksheet, there was a "chore description" activity. P chose instead to describe how to braid a bracelet, which she did fairly well. When I read her description back to her, she saw an obvious hole in it and filled it in.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): We only just had time for this, but P did her 5-a-day well. We didn't have time to finish the last question (I asked her to make 30 cents using at least one quarter, which she did, but there was no time for her to make 30 cents another way, because we needed to go to ballet).
E's "school": Nope. Didn't happen.
Geography and/or science: Nor this.
Other: Because of so much other going on.
I've been meaning to insert a musing on the value of learning to read at the same time as your kid. I'm thinking here of my studies of Arabic. I've known most of the letter sounds in Arabic since I was 13, but fluency is hard to come by. When I'm at Arabic Bible study and the ladies take turns reading aloud a few verses each, I feel extremely stupid. I force all my powers of concentration into pronouncing the words on the page, but there is no mental power left over for parsing the meaning of what I just read. The ladies are all supportive and encouraging, but I can tell that it's frustrating for them to hear me going so slowly. Suddenly, I have sympathy for all the kids who were in the "other" reading groups, and for the adults who stumble over words when called on to read aloud. (Since I've been reading fluently since I was 5, I'm afraid I always felt mild disdain for people who couldn't). I know that, with practice, my skills will improve. I'm also sure that it makes me a better teacher for P and E. The immediacy of this experience - being faced with a page full of squiggles, and pouring all my energy into turning the squiggles into words - helps me grasp what it's like for a small child doing this for the first time. So, homeschool moms and kindergarten teachers, let's hear it for learning to read a phonetic language that isn't your own, for a deeper understanding of what it's like for your kids.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Week 12, day 1
Ari and I had a wonderful time away from the kids in Fredricksburg, TX, and we enjoyed our time in North Carolina with my parents over Thanksgiving as well. We got back last night, so this morning our 2-week break was officially over.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed all the memory verses to date. I was surprised at how well E remembered most of them - he supplied the gaps in P's memory. We read the story of Jehoshaphat's "singing army" - how God caused the alliance of enemies to turn on each other and destroy each other, so that Jehoshaphat had only to take the plunder.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): I had no time to do prep work, so the kids watched me make another calendar sheet for December. They thought it was cold, I thought it was cool: 53 F. Ari's parents found a jungle gym on Craig's List and stepping outside to observe the weather was more temptation than they could handle, so I let them spend 5 minutes or so burning energy before insisting that they return inside.
Handwriting: After lunch and some longer jungle gym play, I let each child trace a few dry-erase letter cards. I did "wet-dry-try" with E on the board while P finished her letter cards (I gave her more than him), and he happily (and neatly, for a 3-year-old) wrote B and F on the board several times.
Language Arts: This is another review week, so P has vowel worksheets to do as well as her copywork. I introduced the third Sonlight K reader, and P was unwilling to read it at first, so I helped E through it. He doesn't routinely recognize the letter I, and most of the words in the reader contained the short i sound, so I gave him lots of hints, but he was able to read about a third of the words independently. Once he was done, P read the book fairly accurately but slowly. We'll work on it daily and I'm sure she'll increase in fluency.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did all the problems on her (hastily prepared) 5-a-day without much trouble. She doesn't always look closely at a problem to see whether it is addition or subtraction, but I point out to her if she's solving 11+3 when she should be solving 11-3. She's fully grasped making a given amount of money using dimes and pennies, so I think she's getting comfortable with place value.
We started playing the "trading up" game, but neither child seemed as excited about it as usual (though they were the ones who suggested we play it). When E asked me to count his coins for him and the total was different from what he had anticipated, he swept the coins to the floor in rage and I declared the game over. He sulked for a while, and I didn't change my mind, so he contented himself with playing with cardboard shapes instead (I made them from old cereal boxes and painted them with tempera paint - there are squares, circles, triangles, and halves and quarters of the squares and circles).
E's "school": I didn't prepare anything from SSGMR this week, though the Saturday immediately after my last post we did observe whether various items sank or floated in water. We didn't read any of the Sonlight P3/4 books, but we looked at "A Child's Book of Art" from P4/5 and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs".
Geography and/or science: We went to Titmouse Club where the theme was squirrels and mice. The children learned that rodents' teeth grow throughout their lives and they have to gnaw to keep them from getting too long, that baby mice and squirrels are born blind and naked, and that they build nests for their babies that look a bit like birds' nests. They made thumbprint pictures of mice and we took a nature walk during which we saw no mice or squirrels, but 2 female cardinals.
Other: None of this. When the math game finished on such a sour note, I felt that I wouldn't get away with making the kids do anything else at all, so I let them play by themselves. Easing back into our daily routine isn't automatic, and it felt like more of a fight today than usual.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed all the memory verses to date. I was surprised at how well E remembered most of them - he supplied the gaps in P's memory. We read the story of Jehoshaphat's "singing army" - how God caused the alliance of enemies to turn on each other and destroy each other, so that Jehoshaphat had only to take the plunder.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): I had no time to do prep work, so the kids watched me make another calendar sheet for December. They thought it was cold, I thought it was cool: 53 F. Ari's parents found a jungle gym on Craig's List and stepping outside to observe the weather was more temptation than they could handle, so I let them spend 5 minutes or so burning energy before insisting that they return inside.
Handwriting: After lunch and some longer jungle gym play, I let each child trace a few dry-erase letter cards. I did "wet-dry-try" with E on the board while P finished her letter cards (I gave her more than him), and he happily (and neatly, for a 3-year-old) wrote B and F on the board several times.
Language Arts: This is another review week, so P has vowel worksheets to do as well as her copywork. I introduced the third Sonlight K reader, and P was unwilling to read it at first, so I helped E through it. He doesn't routinely recognize the letter I, and most of the words in the reader contained the short i sound, so I gave him lots of hints, but he was able to read about a third of the words independently. Once he was done, P read the book fairly accurately but slowly. We'll work on it daily and I'm sure she'll increase in fluency.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did all the problems on her (hastily prepared) 5-a-day without much trouble. She doesn't always look closely at a problem to see whether it is addition or subtraction, but I point out to her if she's solving 11+3 when she should be solving 11-3. She's fully grasped making a given amount of money using dimes and pennies, so I think she's getting comfortable with place value.
We started playing the "trading up" game, but neither child seemed as excited about it as usual (though they were the ones who suggested we play it). When E asked me to count his coins for him and the total was different from what he had anticipated, he swept the coins to the floor in rage and I declared the game over. He sulked for a while, and I didn't change my mind, so he contented himself with playing with cardboard shapes instead (I made them from old cereal boxes and painted them with tempera paint - there are squares, circles, triangles, and halves and quarters of the squares and circles).
E's "school": I didn't prepare anything from SSGMR this week, though the Saturday immediately after my last post we did observe whether various items sank or floated in water. We didn't read any of the Sonlight P3/4 books, but we looked at "A Child's Book of Art" from P4/5 and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs".
Geography and/or science: We went to Titmouse Club where the theme was squirrels and mice. The children learned that rodents' teeth grow throughout their lives and they have to gnaw to keep them from getting too long, that baby mice and squirrels are born blind and naked, and that they build nests for their babies that look a bit like birds' nests. They made thumbprint pictures of mice and we took a nature walk during which we saw no mice or squirrels, but 2 female cardinals.
Other: None of this. When the math game finished on such a sour note, I felt that I wouldn't get away with making the kids do anything else at all, so I let them play by themselves. Easing back into our daily routine isn't automatic, and it felt like more of a fight today than usual.
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