A VERY GOOD SCHOOL DAY. The children listened, Andrew was focused, he remembered things, read things, tried things, found that all of it was a lot of fun. It did not feel like school work at all, and yet, we did more than the program called for.
I wondered, if Andrew would remember anything we learned about boats and ships. He did. The 'stern' seems to be the hardest part to remember, though. As we were on the subject of ships, we reviewed floating. The example experiment in the book was a messy one to follow, but the kids learned a good lesson. We made a ball out of clay and watched it sink to the bottom of a bowl. Next, we used the same ball and molded it into a boat, and it floated beautifully. The clay, however, has a bad tendency to turn into a major mess when getting wet. Playdoh proved to be a better choice, although it also became sticky when wet.
One of our math assignments was a lot of fun. We started learning about centimeters. Fist, I had the kids measure some toys in inches and then in centimeters. Having family overseas, it was not hard to explain to Andrew that we measure things in inches, but Grandma measures things in centimeters. They do a lot of stuff differently over there, so why not measure differently as well.
Our last lesson today was about the wild places in the world. We started reading about mountains and how people live in the mountains. I showed Andrew how mountains look on the physical map of the world and we tried to memorize a few mountain rangers in the world. Andy's favorite was the Andes, of course.
Also, today, I had a 'caught reading' moment in my house. While I was getting lunch ready, the children were very quiet in the living room. As I peeked round the corner, I saw both of them sitting down with their noses in books. Wonderful!
I have always loved rainbows. I have noticed that Texas does not have as many of them as Estonia. It took me seven years to spot my first one here. It was a treat though - a double rainbow. I am thankful that my children were there to watch the pretty colors in the sky with me that day.
Today, however, we made a rainbow of our own. As part of our science lesson we played with the mirror in the water until it gave us a pretty spectrum.
The other fun thing we did today was the coracle - a sort of a boat early people used for traveling. Of course, we made a toy one to float around in the pool and used chenille sticks and plastic instead of a wood frame and tar smeared hides. Less mess, I'd say.
Our first week of school is over and I am floored by how much Andrew has learned. Seriously, his little brain has processed a lot of new information these past four days. How much will he remember come Monday? I do not know. I believe, there will be a lot of reviewing happening, but the sheer fact that he has been exposed to new vocabulary and the world that used to be rather little has become much, much bigger is worth celebrating.
For me, the highlight of today was to hear my son tell me all the names of the months by heart. I am not much into 'dry' repetition when it comes to memorizing new things. So, I wrote the first letters of every month onto his fingers and palms. It worked. Something unexpected and out of the ordinary, but it worked.
For Andrew, the best part of the school day was the balloon race. We were learning about air all around us. We made it move things. Such a simple experiment made him think that school is the coolest thing ever. I can not believe, he said the same thing about practicing writing number 2s over and over and over. Mystery.
