Monday: Language Arts. This morning, P and E industriously set about using E's birthday gift of 12 rolls of tape. By the time we had breakfast, there were 4 empty rolls sitting next to the table, and getting through the spider's web of tape crisscrossing the room was an athletic event. I gave P the choice of doing school right after breakfast and finishing before lunch, or of continuing to play while B and I went for a brisk walk and I took a shower, but needing to do some school after lunch. She chose the latter option. The walk put B to sleep, and he slept throughout the first part of school.
Our review was relatively uneventful. On P's math 5-a-day, I asked her to use coins to make a dollar, and we discussed again that quarters are called quarters because it takes 4 of them to make a dollar. I wrote on the board, "4/4 = 1".
We made a new letter sheet today, and the kids came up with a labour saving idea. I'd actually come up with the same idea weeks ago, but not suggested it because I thought they enjoyed cutting out the pictures and taping them to a new piece of paper. The idea was to put the large letter on the same page as the one on which we printed the corresponding pictures, and write the labels on directly. Because this hadn't been in my plans when I was printing out the pictures, I had to squeeze the labels somewhat, but it worked pretty well and I'll organize it better next week. This saved us a good 15-20 minutes, so we got a lot more done before lunch than I had expected to. P did her copywork neatly - on the part that she traced, I asked her to identify first which letters she had traced particularly well, and then which ones she had done sloppily. I asked her to pay careful attention to those when she copied the words onto the next line, and she did beautifully. She enjoyed the reader, as well. We played a geography game, in which we took turns naming a place (for example, Sweden) and the next player was to name a place starting with the ending sound of the previous word. This required the children to listen for ending sounds (not letters - Arkansas was legitimately followed by Austin). They struggled to come up with actual place names, so I had to help them once they'd figured out what sound the name needed to start with.
After lunch, I had P put words in alphabetical order. She doesn't know the alphabet well enough to start in the middle, so the first few words are put in place rapidly, but when she's left with words starting with P, R, and T, she has to go through the entire alphabet until she gets to P, then again all the way to Q (no, I don't have any of those), then R, etc. I'm waiting for her to figure out that there's a quicker way to do it, because if she figures it out herself it'll stick better. We also played a game like 20 questions, and I used tally marks to keep track of the score, discussing how you count by 5s and then by 1s. E wanted to think of things for me to guess, and after I almost stumped them with Jupiter, E had me guess an imaginary comet whose name he'd just come up with on the spur of the moment (when I realized that this was the case, I gave up and asked him to tell me the answer). We finished the school day with a game of letter sound Bingo, and each of us took a turn calling out the sounds. E got frustrated with trying to find the letters on his Bingo card, and couldn't remember most of the sounds, so I helped him - he'll pick them up this way too. P did pretty well with finding the letters on the cards, but really excelled when it was her turn to call out the letters. She knows all of them with confidence, by name and by sound.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Week 21, day 5
Friday: Geography We got started late because I was disorganized and also waited until B was napping before going for my walk/run. According to what I can figure out at mapmywalk.com, I walked about 1.4 miles and ran 0.8 miles. This felt great! My knee hardly even hurt afterward. Take that, pessimistic physical therapist! I feel so thankful that God has given me pretty much complete healing from both the accident 6 years ago and my re-injury 2 years ago.
We did all our review stuff before lunch, and the geography component afterward. This week, we looked at Italy. We marked it on the Markable Map, and looked at the atlas page. Then we read "Buried Treasure" from Stories from Around the World - a fun story about a lazy young man who is told that a field contains 50 pieces of gold. He pulls up the weeds in the field, digs it up (watering it to keep down the dust), puts manure on it to keep the local schoolchildren off it, and the fellow who told him about the 50 gold pieces then sows lettuce on it. At the end of the story, a merchant comes by and buys the resultant lettuce for 50 gold pieces. We discussed the virtues of hard work and how it's more likely to result in treasure than waiting for it to fall in your lap. We then looked at the pictures in a book about Italy. I told P that it was time to make a book about Italy, and she asked if she had to. When I told her she could do it today or tomorrow, she impressed me with her wisdom by saying, "I don't want to do it now, but I know that once I start I'll enjoy doing it." And she did! She wrote "Italy" on the front, drew a flag, coloured the map, and drew the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Venice, pizza, an aqueduct, and catacombs. For dinner, we made pizza.
We did all our review stuff before lunch, and the geography component afterward. This week, we looked at Italy. We marked it on the Markable Map, and looked at the atlas page. Then we read "Buried Treasure" from Stories from Around the World - a fun story about a lazy young man who is told that a field contains 50 pieces of gold. He pulls up the weeds in the field, digs it up (watering it to keep down the dust), puts manure on it to keep the local schoolchildren off it, and the fellow who told him about the 50 gold pieces then sows lettuce on it. At the end of the story, a merchant comes by and buys the resultant lettuce for 50 gold pieces. We discussed the virtues of hard work and how it's more likely to result in treasure than waiting for it to fall in your lap. We then looked at the pictures in a book about Italy. I told P that it was time to make a book about Italy, and she asked if she had to. When I told her she could do it today or tomorrow, she impressed me with her wisdom by saying, "I don't want to do it now, but I know that once I start I'll enjoy doing it." And she did! She wrote "Italy" on the front, drew a flag, coloured the map, and drew the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Venice, pizza, an aqueduct, and catacombs. For dinner, we made pizza.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Week 21, days 3 and 4
Wednesday: Math. It appears to be spring break for all the public schools, so while I was discovering that my Bible study half an hour's drive away was cancelled, P and E were discovering with their Oma that the indoor play place they usually frequent was completely packed. Once both they and I were back home, we did school. I forgot to record the weather on our calendar, but otherwise we went through our standard daily review. We then read 2 math books I checked out from the library: Earth Day - Hooray!, which deals with place value, and Math for All Seasons, which deals with counting objects in clever ways (beginning multiplication, basically). On Tuesday afternoon I had re-read the first part of Chapter 1 of Primary Grade Challenge Math with P, and we had talked about the difference between linear increase (add $4 to the allowance each year) and exponential increase (double the allowance each year). I graphed the 2 options in Excel, but P didn't seem to understand what I was doing - I think Excel is too much of a black box to her, and it'll be more helpful to use pencil and paper. We can do that next week. I had also spent some time on Tuesday looking through the first few chapters of the book and reworking Stupid Problems. This is a pet peeve of mine: math word problems that make no sense. For example, "Billy's pocket is leaking money. He starts with $100. After he walks 1 mile, he has $90, after 2 miles he has $80, etc. How much money does he have after 5 miles?" How in the real world could this conceivably happen? It teaches kids to dissociate math from the real world, when math is essential for understanding the real world. So I rewrote the problem to be, "A barrel with a hole in the bottom starts out containing 100 gallons. After 1 minute, it contains 90 gallons, after 2 minutes it contains 80 gallons. How much water does it contain after 5 minutes?" This problem requires identical math, but also refers to an actual situation you might encounter in this universe. Perhaps being forced to solve problems like the original one is part of why Ari's students struggled to see the ridiculousness of their answers when they'd made mistakes - if you generally have to give answers to ridiculous questions, you get used to ridiculous answers.
All right, that was enough ranting.
P had been told last week that this week would be spring break for her ballet lessons, but she didn't see the need to tell me that this was the case until she had tried the door to the studio and found it locked. Since I had planned on going to Target during her ballet lesson, I simply took her along in her ballet clothes. We returned a few baby gifts (everyone likes to give 0-3 month sizes, and my babies start out filling up the smallest size - if I used all the 0-3 month clothes we were given, we'd barely have time to put him in each outfit once before he outgrew them). Once we had free Target money, I went wild and bought running shoes and a watch strap for myself. P wanted a watch for herself, and in celebration of the fact that she can now tell time fairly well, I bought her one too. Given the choice between the plain pink one and the purple one with the flower, she chose the flower. I have asked her the time a few times and she helpfully gives me the correct answer after a minute or so of hard thinking. I'll stop putting time telling on her math 5-a-days so often, because with her own watch she's getting plenty of practice.
Thursday: Bible/Music. Today was E's 4th birthday. This caused school to be late and short. Ari and I gave him an ant farm, which was exciting (especially when the ants, which we'd placed in the refrigerator overnight to calm them, thawed out quicker than we'd expected and ended up in many non-ant-farm locations). This present was a definitive success, and by the time we started school the ants had already started excavating several tunnels.
Last night, Ari's uncle was (briefly) in town before leaving for a camping trip with Ari's dad this morning. In honour of Uncle Tom's visit, Ari's brother & his wife came up for dinner, so it was a big party. Since they weren't going to make 2 trips in 2 days, they gave E his present last night. It was 2 recorders, one for him and one for P, that my sister-in-law had bought at a music teachers' conference. The children are both able to make painful high-pitched squawks, and P is sometimes able to play 2 or 3 different notes. I had a recorder as a child (I miss it still!) and was hopelessly childish in begging P and E to loan me theirs so I could play. I did show P how to arrange her fingers on the holes, but keeping them in place so they fully cover the holes is going to take her a lot more practice.
Usually, Thursday is CBS day, but it was cancelled due to spring break (fortunately, they told me ahead of time, so no fruitless half-hour drive took place). This meant that there wasn't a CBS Bible story to review. We started, instead, with introducing a new memory verse and catechism question, and then read the story of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. I asked the kids why Jesus was able to do this, leading to a discussion on his deity - his power over death was one of the proofs that he is God.
For (very late) lunch, we went to the Aquarium Restaurant at E's request. There is a phenomenally large fish tank in the middle of the restaurant, containing stingrays, a small shark, 4 groupers about the size of E and P, a guitarfish (looks like a cross between a shark and a ray, so P called it a shray), at least 3 moray eels, and a variety of other fish. After we'd eaten, we rode the ferris wheel and got a good view of the city. Back home, we continued the celebration with a dragon cake (and costume, which my mother-in-law sewed) and the rest of the presents, including a play tent, a tetherball, snorkels, masks and flippers for both P and E, and a box containing 12 rolls of tape (now E's tape fetish won't leave the rest of us "stuck" without any).
All right, that was enough ranting.
P had been told last week that this week would be spring break for her ballet lessons, but she didn't see the need to tell me that this was the case until she had tried the door to the studio and found it locked. Since I had planned on going to Target during her ballet lesson, I simply took her along in her ballet clothes. We returned a few baby gifts (everyone likes to give 0-3 month sizes, and my babies start out filling up the smallest size - if I used all the 0-3 month clothes we were given, we'd barely have time to put him in each outfit once before he outgrew them). Once we had free Target money, I went wild and bought running shoes and a watch strap for myself. P wanted a watch for herself, and in celebration of the fact that she can now tell time fairly well, I bought her one too. Given the choice between the plain pink one and the purple one with the flower, she chose the flower. I have asked her the time a few times and she helpfully gives me the correct answer after a minute or so of hard thinking. I'll stop putting time telling on her math 5-a-days so often, because with her own watch she's getting plenty of practice.
Thursday: Bible/Music. Today was E's 4th birthday. This caused school to be late and short. Ari and I gave him an ant farm, which was exciting (especially when the ants, which we'd placed in the refrigerator overnight to calm them, thawed out quicker than we'd expected and ended up in many non-ant-farm locations). This present was a definitive success, and by the time we started school the ants had already started excavating several tunnels.
Last night, Ari's uncle was (briefly) in town before leaving for a camping trip with Ari's dad this morning. In honour of Uncle Tom's visit, Ari's brother & his wife came up for dinner, so it was a big party. Since they weren't going to make 2 trips in 2 days, they gave E his present last night. It was 2 recorders, one for him and one for P, that my sister-in-law had bought at a music teachers' conference. The children are both able to make painful high-pitched squawks, and P is sometimes able to play 2 or 3 different notes. I had a recorder as a child (I miss it still!) and was hopelessly childish in begging P and E to loan me theirs so I could play. I did show P how to arrange her fingers on the holes, but keeping them in place so they fully cover the holes is going to take her a lot more practice.
Usually, Thursday is CBS day, but it was cancelled due to spring break (fortunately, they told me ahead of time, so no fruitless half-hour drive took place). This meant that there wasn't a CBS Bible story to review. We started, instead, with introducing a new memory verse and catechism question, and then read the story of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. I asked the kids why Jesus was able to do this, leading to a discussion on his deity - his power over death was one of the proofs that he is God.
For (very late) lunch, we went to the Aquarium Restaurant at E's request. There is a phenomenally large fish tank in the middle of the restaurant, containing stingrays, a small shark, 4 groupers about the size of E and P, a guitarfish (looks like a cross between a shark and a ray, so P called it a shray), at least 3 moray eels, and a variety of other fish. After we'd eaten, we rode the ferris wheel and got a good view of the city. Back home, we continued the celebration with a dragon cake (and costume, which my mother-in-law sewed) and the rest of the presents, including a play tent, a tetherball, snorkels, masks and flippers for both P and E, and a box containing 12 rolls of tape (now E's tape fetish won't leave the rest of us "stuck" without any).
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Week 21, days 1 and 2
Monday: Language Arts. We got started later than usual, because I decided to start up exercising again. I went for a brisk walk with B strapped into the mei tai (carrier), and he fell asleep but promptly woke up when we got home. I'm hoping to transition into running a couple of times a week, but I haven't really run for a couple of years so I decided to ease into it by walking for a week or so first. I'm going to need to plan my mornings better (like I used to before B was born) so I can fit in exercise as well as school and meet my goal of finishing by lunchtime.
It seemed to take a long time to get through our daily review, but the kids were both happy to make a new letter sheet. I let them get distracted by Starfall, which ate up more of our time (but it's an excellent resource). By lunch time, we'd only gotten through Day 1 on the Language Arts schedule, where I was hoping to compress the entire week into a day (which has worked previous weeks). P traced her copywork upside down under the table again, but it turned out quite neatly. She copied it while sitting in the correct orientation, which I had stipulated before letting her get under the table.
After lunch, I read a chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh to both P and E, and had P summarize it. She did a good job of not getting bogged down in the details, but struggled to get the major points in the correct order. We all played "mynah bird", in which I said something and the kids had to repeat it. P did much better at this than E. Often they seem equally able to do things, but the 20 months between them does make a difference. I used tongue twisters and hymn lyrics, ending with "Betty Botter" (a favourite poem from my childhood). We finished the rest of the week's scheduled language arts activities, with the exception of the second copywork. I feel that P gets good enough at reading her reader by the end of the week that we can replace Thursday or Friday's reader with copywork, and then I won't have to argue with her about doing 2 copyworks in 1 day.
Tuesday: Science. I scheduled my morning better today, and got in 15 minutes on the exercise bike before having to leave for Titmouse Club. Today's theme was birdwatching, and they had several bird stuffed toys that sang with the distinctive song of that species of bird when squeezed. The docent discussed what makes birds different from other creatures (feathers, beaks, wings, laying eggs), and how there are many species of birds. She even gave a brief description of how one would use a field guide to identify birds. The kids made "binoculars" out of toilet paper tubes, and looked outside for birds. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty hard, so we could hear a few birds but not see any.
After Titmouse Club, we completed our review items. I had intended to do E's school today but not said anything about it to him, but when we were busy preparing lunch he announced that he wanted to do his school Right Now. I told him that he'd have to wait until after lunch, and as a result I will probably suffer from tinnitus when I'm older. I really don't have a good solution for his piercing temper tantrums. I generally try to ignore them for a few minutes, and if he's still going, I send him, shrieking, up to his room. I do not give in to his requests - if he has any sense of cause and effect, he isn't doing it because he thinks it'll get him what he wants. So he had to wait until after lunch for his school.
This week, E's school involved me cutting shapes (square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle) from 5 paper plates (plastic, in this case, since that's what we had) and then having him name the shapes, and then close his eyes (or be blindfolded) and try to guess the shape by tracing it with his finger. Another time, we can have him trace the shapes onto paper with a crayon or marker and cut the paper shapes out. He wasn't able to identify the shapes blindfolded, but we talked about whether the edges were straight or curved as a clue he could use, and counting the number of sides and their relative sizes as another clue. He'll probably be happy to do this again tomorrow.
Once E's school was done, we read 2 library books about birds. The first one dealt with the various types of nests different bird species build, from penguins (no nest, just a flap of skin on the father's belly) to weaver birds and bower birds. The second one described hummingbirds, including the interesting tidbit that the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (in Tucson) once cleaned out the hummingbirds' habitat too thoroughly and realized, when the hummingbirds' eggs fell out through their nests, that the hummingbirds needed spider webs to make their nests solid enough. Once we were done reading, we started an experiment involving growing an avocado pit in water and then we assembled a cup "telephone" (2 plastic cups connected by a string which, when taut, transmits sound). This toy was played with for the rest of the afternoon, except when the kids went outside to play in the puddle and amused themselves with scooping pollen into the water and with standing in front of the dryer vent.
It seemed to take a long time to get through our daily review, but the kids were both happy to make a new letter sheet. I let them get distracted by Starfall, which ate up more of our time (but it's an excellent resource). By lunch time, we'd only gotten through Day 1 on the Language Arts schedule, where I was hoping to compress the entire week into a day (which has worked previous weeks). P traced her copywork upside down under the table again, but it turned out quite neatly. She copied it while sitting in the correct orientation, which I had stipulated before letting her get under the table.
After lunch, I read a chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh to both P and E, and had P summarize it. She did a good job of not getting bogged down in the details, but struggled to get the major points in the correct order. We all played "mynah bird", in which I said something and the kids had to repeat it. P did much better at this than E. Often they seem equally able to do things, but the 20 months between them does make a difference. I used tongue twisters and hymn lyrics, ending with "Betty Botter" (a favourite poem from my childhood). We finished the rest of the week's scheduled language arts activities, with the exception of the second copywork. I feel that P gets good enough at reading her reader by the end of the week that we can replace Thursday or Friday's reader with copywork, and then I won't have to argue with her about doing 2 copyworks in 1 day.
Tuesday: Science. I scheduled my morning better today, and got in 15 minutes on the exercise bike before having to leave for Titmouse Club. Today's theme was birdwatching, and they had several bird stuffed toys that sang with the distinctive song of that species of bird when squeezed. The docent discussed what makes birds different from other creatures (feathers, beaks, wings, laying eggs), and how there are many species of birds. She even gave a brief description of how one would use a field guide to identify birds. The kids made "binoculars" out of toilet paper tubes, and looked outside for birds. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty hard, so we could hear a few birds but not see any.
After Titmouse Club, we completed our review items. I had intended to do E's school today but not said anything about it to him, but when we were busy preparing lunch he announced that he wanted to do his school Right Now. I told him that he'd have to wait until after lunch, and as a result I will probably suffer from tinnitus when I'm older. I really don't have a good solution for his piercing temper tantrums. I generally try to ignore them for a few minutes, and if he's still going, I send him, shrieking, up to his room. I do not give in to his requests - if he has any sense of cause and effect, he isn't doing it because he thinks it'll get him what he wants. So he had to wait until after lunch for his school.
This week, E's school involved me cutting shapes (square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle) from 5 paper plates (plastic, in this case, since that's what we had) and then having him name the shapes, and then close his eyes (or be blindfolded) and try to guess the shape by tracing it with his finger. Another time, we can have him trace the shapes onto paper with a crayon or marker and cut the paper shapes out. He wasn't able to identify the shapes blindfolded, but we talked about whether the edges were straight or curved as a clue he could use, and counting the number of sides and their relative sizes as another clue. He'll probably be happy to do this again tomorrow.
Once E's school was done, we read 2 library books about birds. The first one dealt with the various types of nests different bird species build, from penguins (no nest, just a flap of skin on the father's belly) to weaver birds and bower birds. The second one described hummingbirds, including the interesting tidbit that the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (in Tucson) once cleaned out the hummingbirds' habitat too thoroughly and realized, when the hummingbirds' eggs fell out through their nests, that the hummingbirds needed spider webs to make their nests solid enough. Once we were done reading, we started an experiment involving growing an avocado pit in water and then we assembled a cup "telephone" (2 plastic cups connected by a string which, when taut, transmits sound). This toy was played with for the rest of the afternoon, except when the kids went outside to play in the puddle and amused themselves with scooping pollen into the water and with standing in front of the dryer vent.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Week 20, day 5
Friday: Geography. After doing all our daily review, we started studying Spain. We marked it on the Markable Map as well as reviewing the locations and names of some of the other countries we've covered so far. We then read 3 picture books: "The story of Ferdinand" from the 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, "The Four Brothers" from Stories from Around the World, and "The Contented Priest" from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book. One of the library books I found this week on Spain was close to the kids' listening level (at least P's, E played quietly while I read), so we read that one and looked at the pictures in the other. After lunch, P made her book. She was reluctant to start, but quite happy once I made her choices clear: today, her aunt, uncle, and cousin weren't going to be around all day, whereas tomorrow they would, and she'd rather play with them than do today's schoolwork tomorrow. She wrote "Spain" on the cover, drew the major colours of the flag (I drew the central coat of arms), coloured a map I drew, and drew flamenco dancers, a bullfighter (we watched examples of both flamenco dancing and bullfighting on YouTube), a cork tree, olives, and Columbus asking Ferdinand and Isabella to fund his voyage.
In the late afternoon, my sister-in-law dropped off my nephew (15 months) for us to babysit while she sings in "Aida" and Ari's brother watches her. They'll come here late tonight, spend the night, and we'll all hang out together tomorrow. I was trying to cook a Spanish dish ("tortilla", but nothing like what I think of when I hear the word) with potatoes and eggs, but Ari wanted to do some astrophotography and I was running after all 4 kids and dinner started burning. E and my nephew got to watch as I moved the frying pan off the burner and oil that had spilled onto the burner caught dramatically on fire. I quickly hauled out a pot lid and clapped it on top of the fire, making practical use of the science principle I taught the kids on Tuesday. It's always good when this actually works, as it did this time, but I don't think it improved my nephew's opinion of my ability to care for him. Right now Ari is being a wonderful husband (isn't he always?) and cleaning up the kitchen for me - hooray! The non-burnt parts of the "tortilla" were delicious. I'll make it again, but perhaps not while babysitting and not using the evil burner (there are 2 good and 2 evil burners on this oven).
In the late afternoon, my sister-in-law dropped off my nephew (15 months) for us to babysit while she sings in "Aida" and Ari's brother watches her. They'll come here late tonight, spend the night, and we'll all hang out together tomorrow. I was trying to cook a Spanish dish ("tortilla", but nothing like what I think of when I hear the word) with potatoes and eggs, but Ari wanted to do some astrophotography and I was running after all 4 kids and dinner started burning. E and my nephew got to watch as I moved the frying pan off the burner and oil that had spilled onto the burner caught dramatically on fire. I quickly hauled out a pot lid and clapped it on top of the fire, making practical use of the science principle I taught the kids on Tuesday. It's always good when this actually works, as it did this time, but I don't think it improved my nephew's opinion of my ability to care for him. Right now Ari is being a wonderful husband (isn't he always?) and cleaning up the kitchen for me - hooray! The non-burnt parts of the "tortilla" were delicious. I'll make it again, but perhaps not while babysitting and not using the evil burner (there are 2 good and 2 evil burners on this oven).
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Week 20, day 4
Thursday: Bible, Music. I'd just like to insert a whine about the badness of writing an entire blog post, previewing it, clicking a link in the preview, and losing the entire thing. Boo hiss.
We went to CBS this morning, where the kids heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It was a brunch day, so we all ate lunch at CBS. It made me think, if the boy with the 5 loaves and 2 fishes had had a peanut butter and honey sandwich, a cheese stick, and a mandarin orange in his lunch box instead, everyone else would have had that, too, instead of the loaves and fishes. God uses what we offer him. It's neat that what we offer him doesn't have to be rationally anywhere near what's needed to do the job.
Once we got home, we sang "Holy, Holy, Holy" and I introduced a new catechism and memory verse. It was warm, almost hot today (80s) - spring is definitely here. P started out reading her reader backwards: "dam si ssob siH". After sounding out that far, she announced, "That sounds like Arabic. I'm going to read it the right way around." She did so, very well. I wonder if an Arabic speaker would think Arabic read left to right sounded like English. P did her 5-a-day math review with ease.
We read the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in the children's Bible, as well as the story of the prodigal son. I tried to get the kids to act out the feeding of the 5,000, using the bag of loaves and fishes they made as a craft at CBS, but E in particular refused to play, and P was fairly reluctant. I'm surprised that it's so hard to get them interested in doing this.
I gave P another piano lesson. She is now able to reliably put her right thumb on C and fingers 2-5 on D-G, and press the appropriate key when she sees a number from C to 5 (yes, I know C isn't a number) written on a piece of paper. The free piano lessons we're using for now give the kid the option of writing their own 8-note "song", providing C _ _ _ / _ _ _ C. By starting and ending on C, whatever the kid writes sounds pretty good. P was thoroughly taken with the idea that she can write her own music, and happily wrote and played 3 "songs" of her own. I just need to be more diligent in suggesting that she practice.
We went to CBS this morning, where the kids heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It was a brunch day, so we all ate lunch at CBS. It made me think, if the boy with the 5 loaves and 2 fishes had had a peanut butter and honey sandwich, a cheese stick, and a mandarin orange in his lunch box instead, everyone else would have had that, too, instead of the loaves and fishes. God uses what we offer him. It's neat that what we offer him doesn't have to be rationally anywhere near what's needed to do the job.
Once we got home, we sang "Holy, Holy, Holy" and I introduced a new catechism and memory verse. It was warm, almost hot today (80s) - spring is definitely here. P started out reading her reader backwards: "dam si ssob siH". After sounding out that far, she announced, "That sounds like Arabic. I'm going to read it the right way around." She did so, very well. I wonder if an Arabic speaker would think Arabic read left to right sounded like English. P did her 5-a-day math review with ease.
We read the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in the children's Bible, as well as the story of the prodigal son. I tried to get the kids to act out the feeding of the 5,000, using the bag of loaves and fishes they made as a craft at CBS, but E in particular refused to play, and P was fairly reluctant. I'm surprised that it's so hard to get them interested in doing this.
I gave P another piano lesson. She is now able to reliably put her right thumb on C and fingers 2-5 on D-G, and press the appropriate key when she sees a number from C to 5 (yes, I know C isn't a number) written on a piece of paper. The free piano lessons we're using for now give the kid the option of writing their own 8-note "song", providing C _ _ _ / _ _ _ C. By starting and ending on C, whatever the kid writes sounds pretty good. P was thoroughly taken with the idea that she can write her own music, and happily wrote and played 3 "songs" of her own. I just need to be more diligent in suggesting that she practice.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Week 20, day 3
Wednesday: Math. While I had my shower, I let the kids play with pattern blocks and the pegboard. Then we did all our review. I did this week's SSGMR activity with E, which involved doing a given activity a set number of times (clap your hands 3 times, hop on 2 feet 5 times, wiggle like a snake until I say "stop"). He loved this - I'll bear it in mind for when he's antsy. P struggled with the subtraction on her 5-a-day. I asked her to solve 16-9, and when she set it up she tried to solve 6-9 and instead solved 9-6, so I hauled out the manipulatives (pennies). I had her count out 16 pennies and remove 9 of them, so she saw that that was 7 pennies, and wrote 7 down as her answer, but then wanted to write a 1 in the tens place because 1-0=1. So I showed her how the 1 had already been used in getting the answer in the ones place: we started with 6 pennies, and I asked her to take 9 pennies away from those 6 pennies. She couldn't, of course, so I brought in a dime. I showed her that the dime was the 1 in the tens place, and the 6 pennies were the 6 in the ones place. We traded in the dime for 2 nickels, and I asked her to take away 9 cents from the 2 nickels and 6 pennies we had. She successfully removed a nickel and 4 pennies, leaving a nickel and 2 pennies: 7 cents. Using the dime first and transforming it into nickels and seeing it incorporated into the answer helped her see that it had been used up. I'm going to move subtraction onto more frequent review, since she struggled with it last time I asked her about it on her 5-a-day as well. I think I'll ask her to show the process with manipulatives, as well - she does fine when she can count on her fingers, but with numbers greater than 10 she runs into problems.
(Aside: here is a benefit of homeschooling! If she were in a class of 30 kids, and answered that 16-9 was 13, or 17, it would just be marked wrong, and the source of her confusion wouldn't be addressed, and like many people she might start to think math doesn't make sense or is too hard).
Another problem involved making 75 cents using the fewest possible coins. P has internalized that 2 quarters makes 50 cents, but not that 3 quarters makes 75 cents, so she started with 50 cents, added 2 dimes and a nickel, and traded the dimes and nickel in for a quarter. We then talked about how a dollar is made up of 100 cents, and half a dollar is 50 cents, and half of a half dollar is a quarter dollar, which is why the 25-cent coin is called a quarter. This turned out to be useful for the next activity.
I bought a book, Primary Grade Challenge Math, which just arrived from Amazon yesterday. It contains a variety of types of problems, each with a chapter of its own which gives an explanation and then contains 4 levels of problems. This means that, while P is ready for some of the Level 1 problems now, we'll be able to keep coming back to the book for the next several years at least. Today we looked at the first chapter, on sequences. It started with a story about a girl whose mother gave her the choice between having her $2 weekly allowance increase by $4 at each birthday or double at each birthday. Looking at just the first 3 numbers in each sequence ($2, $6, $10 vs. $2, $4, $8), the girl was about to choose the first option, but she made a chart of how the numbers increased over the next 8 years and discovered, of course, that exponential increase is awesome. Another example was given of a boy with 100 jelly beans in a jar, who decided to eat half of them every day. We took out coins and let them represent jelly beans - first, 100 cents in quarters, then half of that (2 quarters), then 1 quarter. When we needed to break it in half, P and E both laughed at my efforts to fold the quarter coin in two. I then showed them how to trade down to 2 dimes and 5 pennies. We divided them into a dime, 2 pennies, but I was still incapable of breaking the final penny in half (I really tried, and was deemed quite amusing by my offspring). I then had the idea of tracing the penny on a piece of paper with a crayon and cutting it in half, so we saw that half of 25 cents was 12 1/2 cents (so Jimmy, or whatever his name was, ate 12 and a half jelly beans). P was so entertained by this that we had to go on dividing, and she was able to figure out that the sequence was 6 1/4 and 3 1/8 jelly beans (I had to cut up the whole penny into 8ths, and have her count all of them, to get the final result). At that point, although P was still having a great time, I could foresee that 1 9/16 was going to be much too complicated to keep track of (all those tiny bits of paper!), so we moved on to the first problem in Level 1, which was continuing a sequence of even numbers. P was able to do it with a bit of help. I think she'll enjoy re-reading the chapter intro each week until we've done all the Level 1 problems for the chapter.
I also introduced the concept of adding 3 numbers together. Since P has a solid grasp of what addition is, it wasn't at all difficult for her. The key difficulty for her, I think, will be getting the numbers correctly lined up in vertical format. She was easily able to solve the problems I set up for her, so I'm going to start putting them on her 5-a-days.
This afternoon was my final midwife checkup (6 weeks postpartum) - everything is fine, and B is now 12 lb 6 oz (almost 3 pounds above his already large birth weight - he's gained an average of half a pound a week, which explains why I feel like he's always nursing). On the way home, we discussed the concept of exponential decay some more, but P didn't seem to have grasped it quite as well as I thought. It might be an idea to make it even more concrete with actual jelly beans. We might start with 32 or 16, though, so as not to have to deal with half jelly beans the first time. Also I don't think letting my kid eat 50 jelly beans in a day is a good plan. I did that for my glucose test when 28 weeks pregnant with B, and no longer like jelly beans. But my kids do, and they may as well have a solid grasp of the idea that math is delicious.
(Aside: here is a benefit of homeschooling! If she were in a class of 30 kids, and answered that 16-9 was 13, or 17, it would just be marked wrong, and the source of her confusion wouldn't be addressed, and like many people she might start to think math doesn't make sense or is too hard).
Another problem involved making 75 cents using the fewest possible coins. P has internalized that 2 quarters makes 50 cents, but not that 3 quarters makes 75 cents, so she started with 50 cents, added 2 dimes and a nickel, and traded the dimes and nickel in for a quarter. We then talked about how a dollar is made up of 100 cents, and half a dollar is 50 cents, and half of a half dollar is a quarter dollar, which is why the 25-cent coin is called a quarter. This turned out to be useful for the next activity.
I bought a book, Primary Grade Challenge Math, which just arrived from Amazon yesterday. It contains a variety of types of problems, each with a chapter of its own which gives an explanation and then contains 4 levels of problems. This means that, while P is ready for some of the Level 1 problems now, we'll be able to keep coming back to the book for the next several years at least. Today we looked at the first chapter, on sequences. It started with a story about a girl whose mother gave her the choice between having her $2 weekly allowance increase by $4 at each birthday or double at each birthday. Looking at just the first 3 numbers in each sequence ($2, $6, $10 vs. $2, $4, $8), the girl was about to choose the first option, but she made a chart of how the numbers increased over the next 8 years and discovered, of course, that exponential increase is awesome. Another example was given of a boy with 100 jelly beans in a jar, who decided to eat half of them every day. We took out coins and let them represent jelly beans - first, 100 cents in quarters, then half of that (2 quarters), then 1 quarter. When we needed to break it in half, P and E both laughed at my efforts to fold the quarter coin in two. I then showed them how to trade down to 2 dimes and 5 pennies. We divided them into a dime, 2 pennies, but I was still incapable of breaking the final penny in half (I really tried, and was deemed quite amusing by my offspring). I then had the idea of tracing the penny on a piece of paper with a crayon and cutting it in half, so we saw that half of 25 cents was 12 1/2 cents (so Jimmy, or whatever his name was, ate 12 and a half jelly beans). P was so entertained by this that we had to go on dividing, and she was able to figure out that the sequence was 6 1/4 and 3 1/8 jelly beans (I had to cut up the whole penny into 8ths, and have her count all of them, to get the final result). At that point, although P was still having a great time, I could foresee that 1 9/16 was going to be much too complicated to keep track of (all those tiny bits of paper!), so we moved on to the first problem in Level 1, which was continuing a sequence of even numbers. P was able to do it with a bit of help. I think she'll enjoy re-reading the chapter intro each week until we've done all the Level 1 problems for the chapter.
I also introduced the concept of adding 3 numbers together. Since P has a solid grasp of what addition is, it wasn't at all difficult for her. The key difficulty for her, I think, will be getting the numbers correctly lined up in vertical format. She was easily able to solve the problems I set up for her, so I'm going to start putting them on her 5-a-days.
This afternoon was my final midwife checkup (6 weeks postpartum) - everything is fine, and B is now 12 lb 6 oz (almost 3 pounds above his already large birth weight - he's gained an average of half a pound a week, which explains why I feel like he's always nursing). On the way home, we discussed the concept of exponential decay some more, but P didn't seem to have grasped it quite as well as I thought. It might be an idea to make it even more concrete with actual jelly beans. We might start with 32 or 16, though, so as not to have to deal with half jelly beans the first time. Also I don't think letting my kid eat 50 jelly beans in a day is a good plan. I did that for my glucose test when 28 weeks pregnant with B, and no longer like jelly beans. But my kids do, and they may as well have a solid grasp of the idea that math is delicious.
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