Lily, age 3 (nearly 4!) is doing better today. We had taken her to urgent care the day before, on sunday, because of an ear infection. She's doing much better on the antibiotics, but is still complaining about her ear making noises. Both girls, Annika (7) and Lily have a cough and stuffy noses. Even though they are technically sick, they are acting like their usual happy selves. No worries. :-)
We start most of our days working on math problems. Generally we do math about 6 days a week. This is our "strong" subject, and we really like our program, which is "Math U See". Each child completes about 3 pages per day, and I'm pleased with their progress. Especially since both kids seem to be doing their work easily enough without much help from me.
Christopher is focusing on single-digit multiplication right now. He is working through chapter 8 in Gamma. There are 30 chapters in all.
Annika is focusing on single-digit addition and subtraction. She is working through chapter 23 in Alpha. There are 30 chapters in Alpha as well.
No problems with either of them today. The mistakes they do make happen when they're distracted. Christopher has a special fondness for "distractions" and likes to create them, lol.
Annika and I worked on learning some rhymes. We focused on these 2:
"Over in the meadow in a nest built of sticks,
Lived an old mother crow with her little crows six.
"Caw," said the mother, "We caw," said the six,
So they cawed all day long in a nest built of sticks."
"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,
Went to bed with his breeches on,
One shoe off and one shoe on;
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John."
I also asked Annika to draw a picture of a person with eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, a neck, trunk, arms, hands, legs, and feet. She loved doing this. I saved her picture by rubber cementing it in her language arts notebook.
Later, I asked her to lie down on butcher paper, and I traced her body's outline. She then was allowed to draw clothes on the figure and draw a face on. She totally had fun, and we liked the outcome so much we hung it up on the wall in the kitchen.
I started knitting her a scarf yesterday with soy wool. I was intrigued by the "soy" as an ingredient in the wool, and just had to work with it. :-) I finished the scarf today, and Annika wore it proudly all day long, and included it in today's drawings.
While I was working with the kids I also managed to put the finishing touches on a potholder I knit recently. I used 100% wool from Peace Fleece. It's very colorful and I just needed to weave the ends in. I love how it turned out. :-)
Annika and I tried to look for the moon outside, since she is recording moon phases in her calendar. Unfortunately we couldn't see the moon in the sky tonight. :-(
Annika also practised her writing independently with the book "Draw, Write, Now". She likes it and gets it out of its cubby whenever she's in the mood to work with it. This particular book has farm animals as the theme, and she worked on the hens/chicken page today. Very cute.
I played "Scrabble" with the 2 older kids today. Believe it or not, but it was my first time playing the game. I had to learn the rules first, and it wasn't a lot of fun. Mostly because my kids are both poor spellers and I had to basically play for all of us!
Speaking of spelling, Christopher and I worked on his spelling today. He is still misspelling words like "away", "little", "make", "funny", etc. I'm hoping to make vast improvements in this area for him in the coming months. We go through about 5 words a day, and are loosely following the "Spelling Power" program/philosophy on teaching spelling.
Christopher spent most of his "school" time on his social studies today. He is to study our local topography. He is supposed to keep a record of his observations and sketches. This is incredibly difficult for him, the writing part. He can draw easily enough. But he hates to write. I wrote part of it out for him, and had him copy my words. He contributed the last sentence on his own. He needs so much guidance, too much, in my opinion. But if I didn't guide him through the writing part, the exercise would take him hours and he would only hate it more and more.
He pasted a picture he had drawn of a saguaro cactus with rubber cement in his social studies notebook . Then he wrote:
"This is a saguaro cactus. It grows in the sonoran desert. I went to the Desert Botanical Gardens to learn more about the desert I live in. I have seen saguaro cactuses and other cactuses and cactuses can survive with little water for a long time."
Note: We did not go to the DBG today.
Christopher spent a little bit of time practising his cursive writing, which Annika was very jealous of, lol. She really likes to write. What a relief!
All 3 kids played a game on the PC. It's a "Dora the Explorer" one that Mike had bought especially for Lily the day before. She spent the most time playing with it, while I was teaching the others. It's educational, so why not. The funny thing is that when a character in the game asks a question, Lily will loudly answer it! She really thinks the game is talking specifically to her! That's hilarious, I think. She does the same with TV shows like "Dora the Explorer" and "Blue's Clues".
No comments:
Post a Comment