Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed just the most recent verse (which P now knows well and E can say large portions of) and the last 5 catechism questions or so. We read about how David was anointed king, after his oldest brother had been rejected because "man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart."
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): Today was back to being cool. We almost came to blows over whether it should be described as cool or cold, and I averted warfare by writing both on the calendar.
Handwriting: P did 3 pages of the phonics workbook, which didn't involve much handwriting, so I had her write her first and last name on the last of the 3 workbook pages. She struggled to remember that lowercase n is not the same as a small version of a capital N, so that might be one to work on more intensively.
Language Arts: Nothing was scheduled, so we did nothing.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did her 5-a-day with no problem. She's become thoroughly confident about telling time to the half hour. Later in the afternoon, P said, "Mommmmmmy! Let's do something fuuuuun! Like a maaaaaaath game!" So we played a game where we each took turns rolling a die, and each person took the number of pennies indicated on the die, and then traded up: 5 pennies for a nickel, 2 nickels for a dime, and 2 dimes and a nickel for a quarter. When everyone had 2 quarters, the game was over. Counting amounts over 25 cents was a challenge for P, since I haven't really taught that yet, but she started to grasp some of the patterns after a bit. E was able to count on the number of pennies given whatever the silver coins added up to (for example, I'd say "35" and he'd count on his 3 pennies and get 38). We all received our 2nd quarters on consecutive turns, so there was no official winner and thus no tears.
E's "school": I had him match the shoe cutouts again, and arrange them from largest to smallest. While P was decorating her 5-a-day, I showed E with some cardboard shape cutouts how 2 semicircles make a circle, and 4 quarter circles make a circle. I asked him how many quarters it would take to make a half circle, and he unhesitatingly answered that it would take 2. I wrote the relevant fractions on the board to plant the idea in their minds, though I don't intend to formally teach them the notation of fractions just yet.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Week 9, day 4
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed all the memory verses and catechism questions again, and then read about how Saul was anointed to be the first king of Israel.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was warmer, and muggy and drippy. We had a discussion on whether there were necessarily clouds in the sky if it was raining. P was of the opinion that clouds were optional, due to the phenomenon of the "monkey's wedding" (that is, simultaneous rain and sunshine). I insisted that even during a monkey's wedding, there were still clouds in the sky, just not between you and the sun. I drew a diagram on the whiteboard to illustrate this, which I think P and E understood to some extent. E then drew his own rendition of the diagram, featuring a large sun and small earth, so at least that concept was conveyed.
Handwriting: The kids wanted to use their dry-erase letter cards, which they did. P likes sorting hers into vowels and consonants, and further sorting them into "frog jump consonants" (a Handwriting Without Tears term for capital letters starting with a big line down and jumping back up to the starting point before completing the letter, such as B, D, F, M, N, P, and R) and other consonants.
Language Arts: P completed her dictation beautifully. She's really good at this, and sounds out each word without any help. There was a rhyming activity (saying whether a given pair of words rhymed), which she found extremely easy.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did well with her 5-a-day, though she made a careless error on 7-2. When I asked her to check her work, she came up with the correct answer easily. She was instantly able to make 16 cents using 3 coins, but changing it into 16 cents using 4 coins took more trial and error. When she was done decorating her worksheet, I showed her the similarities and differences between the 2 piles of coins, hoping that she'll see that if you have to use n coins to make k cents and one of those coins is a dime, to make k cents using n+1 coins simply requires exchanging a dime with two nickels. One of the more important math skills is the ability to break numbers apart into appropriate smaller numbers and deal with them separately (for example, 9+4 = 9+1+3 = 10+3 = 13). I'm hoping she'll gain this ability by playing with coins on her 5-a-days.
E's "school": This was replaced by a desire on the part of both kids to play outside in the large puddle that forms in the driveway every time it rains. They spent almost an hour splashing around outside while I watched through the window and read my new National Geographic magazine.
Geography and/or science: Did you know that chicken bones can poop? This observational fact was much enjoyed by both children, but E in particular. Let me explain. A few weeks ago, after the scary acid experiments, my father-in-law agreed to my suggestion that we try vinegar for softening a chicken bone instead of hydrochloric acid. Once we got back from CBS, my father-in-law decided that the time had come to investigate the state of the chicken bone. He asked E to try to break it, and it had become floppy enough to bend instead. However, a small hole formed at the bend, and softened, dark brown marrow squirted out the hole, looking remarkably like another type of brown stuff. P tried bending the bone, and it did the same thing. After the kids had spent 10 minutes jumping up and down yelling, "Chicken bones can poop!" he discussed with them what marrow was, and I asked them to speculate on whether a chicken bone that had not soaked in vinegar for a month would be able to poop. They were able to understand that it was not real poop, and that it only came out that way because the bone was so soft. Ah, science - full of beauty and wonder...
Other: P practiced her ballet routine, which she seems to know pretty well. After a few days, I will ask her to do it from memory.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was warmer, and muggy and drippy. We had a discussion on whether there were necessarily clouds in the sky if it was raining. P was of the opinion that clouds were optional, due to the phenomenon of the "monkey's wedding" (that is, simultaneous rain and sunshine). I insisted that even during a monkey's wedding, there were still clouds in the sky, just not between you and the sun. I drew a diagram on the whiteboard to illustrate this, which I think P and E understood to some extent. E then drew his own rendition of the diagram, featuring a large sun and small earth, so at least that concept was conveyed.
Handwriting: The kids wanted to use their dry-erase letter cards, which they did. P likes sorting hers into vowels and consonants, and further sorting them into "frog jump consonants" (a Handwriting Without Tears term for capital letters starting with a big line down and jumping back up to the starting point before completing the letter, such as B, D, F, M, N, P, and R) and other consonants.
Language Arts: P completed her dictation beautifully. She's really good at this, and sounds out each word without any help. There was a rhyming activity (saying whether a given pair of words rhymed), which she found extremely easy.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did well with her 5-a-day, though she made a careless error on 7-2. When I asked her to check her work, she came up with the correct answer easily. She was instantly able to make 16 cents using 3 coins, but changing it into 16 cents using 4 coins took more trial and error. When she was done decorating her worksheet, I showed her the similarities and differences between the 2 piles of coins, hoping that she'll see that if you have to use n coins to make k cents and one of those coins is a dime, to make k cents using n+1 coins simply requires exchanging a dime with two nickels. One of the more important math skills is the ability to break numbers apart into appropriate smaller numbers and deal with them separately (for example, 9+4 = 9+1+3 = 10+3 = 13). I'm hoping she'll gain this ability by playing with coins on her 5-a-days.
E's "school": This was replaced by a desire on the part of both kids to play outside in the large puddle that forms in the driveway every time it rains. They spent almost an hour splashing around outside while I watched through the window and read my new National Geographic magazine.
Geography and/or science: Did you know that chicken bones can poop? This observational fact was much enjoyed by both children, but E in particular. Let me explain. A few weeks ago, after the scary acid experiments, my father-in-law agreed to my suggestion that we try vinegar for softening a chicken bone instead of hydrochloric acid. Once we got back from CBS, my father-in-law decided that the time had come to investigate the state of the chicken bone. He asked E to try to break it, and it had become floppy enough to bend instead. However, a small hole formed at the bend, and softened, dark brown marrow squirted out the hole, looking remarkably like another type of brown stuff. P tried bending the bone, and it did the same thing. After the kids had spent 10 minutes jumping up and down yelling, "Chicken bones can poop!" he discussed with them what marrow was, and I asked them to speculate on whether a chicken bone that had not soaked in vinegar for a month would be able to poop. They were able to understand that it was not real poop, and that it only came out that way because the bone was so soft. Ah, science - full of beauty and wonder...
Other: P practiced her ballet routine, which she seems to know pretty well. After a few days, I will ask her to do it from memory.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Week 9, day 3
School started rather late today, because P had to have some cavities filled at the dentist in the morning (she was very well behaved) and I let her spend her saved up allowance at the toy store afterward. She bought glow-in-the-dark stars, and we spent the first part of the afternoon attaching them to the ceiling and walls of the kids' room.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): I just had them review the most recent memory verse and the last 5 catechism questions or so, and we read about Israel's demand for a king.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): E is now thoroughly proficient at saying what day and date it is given yesterday's day and date. It was slightly warmer today, but the kids still described it as "cool".
Handwriting: P did a page of the phonics activity book today. She was to write the letter that came between 2 given letters, which she did perfectly except for not always matching capitals or lowercases (B _ D requires a capital C, whereas p _ r requires a lowercase q).
Language Arts: P was to retell the story of the 3 bears, which she did in great detail. I wish I'd thought to record this, because I know my mom recorded me telling the same story at about the same age. Perhaps she'll be willing to retell the story when I have the digital voice recorder handy. P was reluctant to trace her copywork for today, but did it well.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): It was time to leave for P's ballet lesson before we got to doing the 5-a-day, so this didn't happen today. The plus is that I don't have to prepare a new one for tomorrow. Counting out her money at the toy store gave her practice with counting money and adding. She remembered all by herself that 4 quarters make a dollar.
E's "school": This also didn't happen, due to time constraints. It was cloudy today, so his fishing expedition didn't result in any sunfish (the main kind he is able to catch, but they are well-named and much harder to catch when the sun is behind a cloud). Call it a lesson in how to cope with disappointment?
Geography and/or science: I forgot to write about yesterday's Titmouse Club, so I'll write that here since no geography or science happened today. The kids learned about bats, how the kind that eat insects have big ears to help them echolocate but the kind that eat fruit instead have good eyesight and smell. They made a bat craft and we had a quick nature walk, and each kid got a bat colouring page, which they both coloured in beautiful rainbow tones.
Other: P's ballet performance is in just over 2 weeks, so each parent was given a handout of the steps to practice with the kids at home. We'll work on that, and I bet she'll do well - it looked like she already knew the dance fairly well when I saw her at her lesson.
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): I just had them review the most recent memory verse and the last 5 catechism questions or so, and we read about Israel's demand for a king.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): E is now thoroughly proficient at saying what day and date it is given yesterday's day and date. It was slightly warmer today, but the kids still described it as "cool".
Handwriting: P did a page of the phonics activity book today. She was to write the letter that came between 2 given letters, which she did perfectly except for not always matching capitals or lowercases (B _ D requires a capital C, whereas p _ r requires a lowercase q).
Language Arts: P was to retell the story of the 3 bears, which she did in great detail. I wish I'd thought to record this, because I know my mom recorded me telling the same story at about the same age. Perhaps she'll be willing to retell the story when I have the digital voice recorder handy. P was reluctant to trace her copywork for today, but did it well.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): It was time to leave for P's ballet lesson before we got to doing the 5-a-day, so this didn't happen today. The plus is that I don't have to prepare a new one for tomorrow. Counting out her money at the toy store gave her practice with counting money and adding. She remembered all by herself that 4 quarters make a dollar.
E's "school": This also didn't happen, due to time constraints. It was cloudy today, so his fishing expedition didn't result in any sunfish (the main kind he is able to catch, but they are well-named and much harder to catch when the sun is behind a cloud). Call it a lesson in how to cope with disappointment?
Geography and/or science: I forgot to write about yesterday's Titmouse Club, so I'll write that here since no geography or science happened today. The kids learned about bats, how the kind that eat insects have big ears to help them echolocate but the kind that eat fruit instead have good eyesight and smell. They made a bat craft and we had a quick nature walk, and each kid got a bat colouring page, which they both coloured in beautiful rainbow tones.
Other: P's ballet performance is in just over 2 weeks, so each parent was given a handout of the steps to practice with the kids at home. We'll work on that, and I bet she'll do well - it looked like she already knew the dance fairly well when I saw her at her lesson.
Week 9, day 2
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We again reviewed all the catechism questions and memory verses so far, and read about Samuel in the temple.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): The weather has stayed cool for a while now, though it wasn't rainy.
Handwriting: Again, the kids traced their letter cards. The dry-erase feature worked beautifully.
Language Arts: We read the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears, and I had P write from dictation the words she traced the day before.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P elaborately decorated her 5-a-day after completing it perfectly. The opportunity to use crayons at will is part of why she loves math.
One of our library books, The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy, inspired the kids to make graphs of their own. I had to help them a good deal, but they placed each person in the family in a Venn diagram with circles for "Men (and boys)", "Women (and girls)", and (intersecting both), "People who wear glasses." Ari and I were in the middle circle, and everyone else was only in the appropriate gender circle. Once we'd done that, the kids asked to do a graph of "Whose hand is longest?" I drew axes on 3 pieces of paper taped together, drew horizontal lines at 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm and a dashed line at 5 inches, and then we traced hands on construction paper and glued them along the x-axis. As predicted, Ari's hand was longest and E's was shortest.
E's "school": I had him match the shoe cutouts and identify which pair was smallest (his) and largest (his daddy's). I pointed out that 3 pairs of shoes is 6 shoes.
Geography and/or science: We read books about South America and about llamas.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): The weather has stayed cool for a while now, though it wasn't rainy.
Handwriting: Again, the kids traced their letter cards. The dry-erase feature worked beautifully.
Language Arts: We read the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears, and I had P write from dictation the words she traced the day before.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): P elaborately decorated her 5-a-day after completing it perfectly. The opportunity to use crayons at will is part of why she loves math.
One of our library books, The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy, inspired the kids to make graphs of their own. I had to help them a good deal, but they placed each person in the family in a Venn diagram with circles for "Men (and boys)", "Women (and girls)", and (intersecting both), "People who wear glasses." Ari and I were in the middle circle, and everyone else was only in the appropriate gender circle. Once we'd done that, the kids asked to do a graph of "Whose hand is longest?" I drew axes on 3 pieces of paper taped together, drew horizontal lines at 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm and a dashed line at 5 inches, and then we traced hands on construction paper and glued them along the x-axis. As predicted, Ari's hand was longest and E's was shortest.
E's "school": I had him match the shoe cutouts and identify which pair was smallest (his) and largest (his daddy's). I pointed out that 3 pairs of shoes is 6 shoes.
Geography and/or science: We read books about South America and about llamas.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Week 9, day 1
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed all the memory verses and catechism done to date, and read the second half of the story of Ruth.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was raining solidly pretty much all day. The weather is still cool. P enjoys figuring out what time it is, with my help.
Handwriting: Thanks to a suggestion on the Sonlight forums, I printed out dry-erase letter cards for both kids - large ones for E and small ones for P. They enjoyed doing this, but I had tried using clear contact paper for laminating them instead of paying to have them properly laminated, and the dry-erase only mostly erased, only coming off completely with rubbing alcohol. Later in the afternoon I took them to a teacher supply store to get them properly laminated, and now they work great.
Language Arts: The kids were happy to do another letter sheet this week, and P, having practiced all her letters on the dry-erase letter cards, did beautifully with the copywork.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): I had given P a sequence to complete (2,4,6,8,?) and she needed a lot of help to figure it out. However, adding 2 coins to 2 cents to make 8 cents was easy and fun for her. Before we started school in the morning, the kids played with Cuisenaire rods, and I got out of the shower to hear my father-in-law tell me, "You've got to stop teaching these kids! E just told me that 6 plus 2 makes 8!" We went to the library in the afternoon and checked out a book on graphs aimed at early elementary age, and the kids really liked it and requested that it be read several times in a row.
E's "school": This week involved tracing around a pair of his shoes, my shoes, and Ari's shoes, cutting out the tracings, labeling them with L and R, and counting them or sorting them by size. E really got excited about this, and had me trace around his boots and his daddy's boots (as I have no cowboy boots, I wasn't nearly as exciting). He later told me, "I like my shoes school."
Geography and/or science: I went to the library and renewed all the books we'd checked out about South America. I read the kids a book about 24 hours in the Amazon jungle, featuring the activities of several animals throughout the day and night and focusing on certain types of animals (for example, howler monkeys early in the morning, and bats at night). It was well above E's level, and he wandered off about halfway through, but P listened attentively.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was raining solidly pretty much all day. The weather is still cool. P enjoys figuring out what time it is, with my help.
Handwriting: Thanks to a suggestion on the Sonlight forums, I printed out dry-erase letter cards for both kids - large ones for E and small ones for P. They enjoyed doing this, but I had tried using clear contact paper for laminating them instead of paying to have them properly laminated, and the dry-erase only mostly erased, only coming off completely with rubbing alcohol. Later in the afternoon I took them to a teacher supply store to get them properly laminated, and now they work great.
Language Arts: The kids were happy to do another letter sheet this week, and P, having practiced all her letters on the dry-erase letter cards, did beautifully with the copywork.
Math (5-a-day, other activities): I had given P a sequence to complete (2,4,6,8,?) and she needed a lot of help to figure it out. However, adding 2 coins to 2 cents to make 8 cents was easy and fun for her. Before we started school in the morning, the kids played with Cuisenaire rods, and I got out of the shower to hear my father-in-law tell me, "You've got to stop teaching these kids! E just told me that 6 plus 2 makes 8!" We went to the library in the afternoon and checked out a book on graphs aimed at early elementary age, and the kids really liked it and requested that it be read several times in a row.
E's "school": This week involved tracing around a pair of his shoes, my shoes, and Ari's shoes, cutting out the tracings, labeling them with L and R, and counting them or sorting them by size. E really got excited about this, and had me trace around his boots and his daddy's boots (as I have no cowboy boots, I wasn't nearly as exciting). He later told me, "I like my shoes school."
Geography and/or science: I went to the library and renewed all the books we'd checked out about South America. I read the kids a book about 24 hours in the Amazon jungle, featuring the activities of several animals throughout the day and night and focusing on certain types of animals (for example, howler monkeys early in the morning, and bats at night). It was well above E's level, and he wandered off about halfway through, but P listened attentively.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Week 8, day 5
Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): P is starting to become quite familiar with the memory verse, but she doesn't really know it well yet, so we'll continue working on it next week. We read the first part of the story of Ruth, how she told Naomi that she would go where Naomi went and that Naomi's God would be her God.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was really cool today, in the upper 60s, and for lunch we ended up having a picnic at a nearby playground. P is really capable when it comes to reading the temperature (she'll say, "sixty-eight point five degrees Fahrenheit" with confidence), which makes me wonder why she struggles with reading numbers like 21. It'll come, I'm sure.
Handwriting: P did 3 pages of the phonics workbook. This time it involved a fair bit of handwriting practice, as the exercise was naming and writing the letters that came before or after a given letter.
Language Arts: We played a matching game with the letter cards, matching capital and lowercase. The backs of the cards aren't completely opaque, and P, by looking carefully, can figure out which cards match. E can't, and he's a sore loser. He was sent to play with his Duplos after knocking the cards off the table in a fit of rage. I'm trying to think of an easy way to make it impossible to guess what the front says from what the back says. Contact paper, perhaps?
Math (5-a-day, other activities): After the letter matching game, P asked to play the coin matching game, which we did with the dime cards (pictures of dimes from 10 cents to 1 dollar). E was happy to play this time, but when we counted up the cards at the end and E had taken 8 cards while P took 12, he knocked the cards off the table again. I sent him back to play with Duplos. Meanwhile, P did her 5-a-day, which went well. I asked her to make 3 cents, and then add one coin to turn it into 13 cents. She first tried adding a nickel, found that it wasn't enough, and immediately replaced it with a dime. I enjoy seeing her get so confident with this.
E's "school": This didn't happen (though I planned for it to), because we started getting ready for our picnic immediately after P was done with her 5-a-day, and after we got back there were other activities.
Geography and/or science: Again, didn't happen. There's a stack of books I keep meaning to look at with the kids, and we never seem to get to them. Perhaps next week.
Other: My mother-in-law bought both kids roller skates! We tried them out this afternoon, with relatively few bumps and no blood - my kids have good balance. (Hey, Paul, you'd be particularly proud of your nephew). This accounts for nothing else of interest happening in the afternoon.
Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It was really cool today, in the upper 60s, and for lunch we ended up having a picnic at a nearby playground. P is really capable when it comes to reading the temperature (she'll say, "sixty-eight point five degrees Fahrenheit" with confidence), which makes me wonder why she struggles with reading numbers like 21. It'll come, I'm sure.
Handwriting: P did 3 pages of the phonics workbook. This time it involved a fair bit of handwriting practice, as the exercise was naming and writing the letters that came before or after a given letter.
Language Arts: We played a matching game with the letter cards, matching capital and lowercase. The backs of the cards aren't completely opaque, and P, by looking carefully, can figure out which cards match. E can't, and he's a sore loser. He was sent to play with his Duplos after knocking the cards off the table in a fit of rage. I'm trying to think of an easy way to make it impossible to guess what the front says from what the back says. Contact paper, perhaps?
Math (5-a-day, other activities): After the letter matching game, P asked to play the coin matching game, which we did with the dime cards (pictures of dimes from 10 cents to 1 dollar). E was happy to play this time, but when we counted up the cards at the end and E had taken 8 cards while P took 12, he knocked the cards off the table again. I sent him back to play with Duplos. Meanwhile, P did her 5-a-day, which went well. I asked her to make 3 cents, and then add one coin to turn it into 13 cents. She first tried adding a nickel, found that it wasn't enough, and immediately replaced it with a dime. I enjoy seeing her get so confident with this.
E's "school": This didn't happen (though I planned for it to), because we started getting ready for our picnic immediately after P was done with her 5-a-day, and after we got back there were other activities.
Geography and/or science: Again, didn't happen. There's a stack of books I keep meaning to look at with the kids, and we never seem to get to them. Perhaps next week.
Other: My mother-in-law bought both kids roller skates! We tried them out this afternoon, with relatively few bumps and no blood - my kids have good balance. (Hey, Paul, you'd be particularly proud of your nephew). This accounts for nothing else of interest happening in the afternoon.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Week 8, day 4
After CBS, Ari and I needed to get our car registered in Texas and get our Texas driver's licences, so we brought the kids along and they learned first-hand about the annoyances of bureaucracy. It wasn't that bad, but I was glad I'd also brought workbooks and paper for the kids to draw on.
Bible: In CBS, the kids heard the story of David and Goliath, and made a craft where Goliath is attached at the feet with a brass fastener to a card background, and he can be rotated to fall over. They told the story with enthusiasm when we returned home. Once we started school, we read the story of Samson.
Calendar: Still cool. By 5:15, when we finally got around to doing this, the temperature was down to 73 degrees. P is getting increasingly good at telling time to the nearest 5 minutes.
Handwriting: I hauled a numbers workbook along to the various car registering places, and P practiced writing the numbers 3 through 10. She disapproved of this workbook's style of "4", but happily wrote it the way HWT teaches. Meanwhile, E wished to write numbers himself. He wrote all the numbers from 1 to 12, and 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, and 11 bore fairly close resemblance to how they were supposed to look. Since he has never (to my knowledge) attempted to write numbers before, I was impressed. P then began writing on a blank piece of paper, and produced, "I luv God. I luv mie frends. Azar and me lik plaing owtside." I didn't give any spelling help except with "Azar". When I asked her which letter to put at the end of "lik" to make the "i" say its name, she promptly wrote an e. She still occasionally reverses "s" and "e", but much less than half the time. Once she was done with her sentences, she wrote the numbers from 1 to 39. She got all the way up to 32 on the one side of the page, and when she flipped it over she started reversing the 3s, but caught her mistake without any input from me and wrote 38 and 39 correctly.
Language Arts: I had P write from dictation the words she had traced yesterday, which she did well. Asked to write a word that rhymed with "hat", she wrote "mat" easily. She also was to finish a story about 2 children preparing lunch. It took a while for her to get into it, but once she did the result was delightful - she turned it into a picnic at a playground.
Math: P had trouble on her 5-a-day with identifying "21" and "13" (I had asked her to put the correct sign between them: greater than, less than, or equal). I helped her figure it out by asking what today's date was (22), what yesterday's was, how that was written, and if it looked the same as what was on her worksheet. She was then able to do it. If I ask her to write 21, she has very little trouble, but reading it is still a struggle for her. She readily completed the coin activity by herself: I asked her to make 11 cents, and then add one coin to turn it into 16 cents. She tried adding a penny, yielding 12 cents, but immediately replaced it with a nickel and correctly deduced that this was 16 cents. 11 pennies and 1 nickel was too much to colour over with a crayon, so I showed her how to put back 5 pennies and replace them with a nickel.
E's "school": E was having so much fun playing with Duplos while P did her seatwork that I replaced the "eggs" in his daily activity with Duplo blocks. His mind wasn't really on the game, but about half the time he achieved success in identifying which of 5 colours I had removed.
Geography and/or science: Perhaps watching us fill out forms and attach our new Texas license plates to our car counts as "social studies"?
Other: No piano practice today. The kids played with Duplos and constructed elaborate houses while I cooked dinner.
Bible: In CBS, the kids heard the story of David and Goliath, and made a craft where Goliath is attached at the feet with a brass fastener to a card background, and he can be rotated to fall over. They told the story with enthusiasm when we returned home. Once we started school, we read the story of Samson.
Calendar: Still cool. By 5:15, when we finally got around to doing this, the temperature was down to 73 degrees. P is getting increasingly good at telling time to the nearest 5 minutes.
Handwriting: I hauled a numbers workbook along to the various car registering places, and P practiced writing the numbers 3 through 10. She disapproved of this workbook's style of "4", but happily wrote it the way HWT teaches. Meanwhile, E wished to write numbers himself. He wrote all the numbers from 1 to 12, and 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, and 11 bore fairly close resemblance to how they were supposed to look. Since he has never (to my knowledge) attempted to write numbers before, I was impressed. P then began writing on a blank piece of paper, and produced, "I luv God. I luv mie frends. Azar and me lik plaing owtside." I didn't give any spelling help except with "Azar". When I asked her which letter to put at the end of "lik" to make the "i" say its name, she promptly wrote an e. She still occasionally reverses "s" and "e", but much less than half the time. Once she was done with her sentences, she wrote the numbers from 1 to 39. She got all the way up to 32 on the one side of the page, and when she flipped it over she started reversing the 3s, but caught her mistake without any input from me and wrote 38 and 39 correctly.
Language Arts: I had P write from dictation the words she had traced yesterday, which she did well. Asked to write a word that rhymed with "hat", she wrote "mat" easily. She also was to finish a story about 2 children preparing lunch. It took a while for her to get into it, but once she did the result was delightful - she turned it into a picnic at a playground.
Math: P had trouble on her 5-a-day with identifying "21" and "13" (I had asked her to put the correct sign between them: greater than, less than, or equal). I helped her figure it out by asking what today's date was (22), what yesterday's was, how that was written, and if it looked the same as what was on her worksheet. She was then able to do it. If I ask her to write 21, she has very little trouble, but reading it is still a struggle for her. She readily completed the coin activity by herself: I asked her to make 11 cents, and then add one coin to turn it into 16 cents. She tried adding a penny, yielding 12 cents, but immediately replaced it with a nickel and correctly deduced that this was 16 cents. 11 pennies and 1 nickel was too much to colour over with a crayon, so I showed her how to put back 5 pennies and replace them with a nickel.
E's "school": E was having so much fun playing with Duplos while P did her seatwork that I replaced the "eggs" in his daily activity with Duplo blocks. His mind wasn't really on the game, but about half the time he achieved success in identifying which of 5 colours I had removed.
Geography and/or science: Perhaps watching us fill out forms and attach our new Texas license plates to our car counts as "social studies"?
Other: No piano practice today. The kids played with Duplos and constructed elaborate houses while I cooked dinner.
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