'13/14 Week 20 Day 1

Last Friday went down in history as the Reading Day. The whole morning and early afternoon we read and discussed books and stories. It was a great time, but I did not count it as a full school day. 

Today, Monday, I and Andrew took our time in Math as we focused a lot of our attention to how we measure time from seconds to years. 
Saara is halfway through her math program. She finished her first Math book and is all ready for her second one. Because Andrew has been taking tests, he still has about ten more lessons plus one more test to go before he is half way through. 

By the end of this week, we should be halfway through our entire school year.

Math. Andrew is almost ready to go shopping by himself.

Morning math work.

All done with book 1.

I had all the props out: the calendar, the clock, and the stopwatch. He already knew a few answers, but still had to figure out some, like how many days and weeks are in one year.  I told him to memorize the numbers, otherwise he would have to add the months and count the weeks again.

Music. The other day, Andrew and Saara recognized a Grieg's piece that played on the radio. I was very encouraged. Today, we looked at Tchaikovsky. The kids can easily recognize the best-known pieces from the Nutcracker and they got familiar with the 1812 overture last year. This afternoon we watched/listened the overture again accompanied with a little bit of history into the Napoleonic wars.

Boys! Andrew loved the real cannons at the end of the piece.

And something for Saara (although Andrew watched it too enthusiastically). We started watching the whole ballet of Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty". I divided the two-hour video recording into smaller sections which we will watch in days to come.