Fifth Practice. May 17, 2012

 At today's soccer practice we had a snap of a visit from a turtle. Thankfully, it did not distract the players for long.

During their half-time devotional Andrew and others started learning about being humble. That is something that for Andrew comes with a lot of difficulty at times, especially when he is hungry, tired, hot, and sweaty. Sounds like a kid at a 5:30 soccer practice to me. A good place to learn humility no matter how challenging the situation is.

Week 34 Day 4

The highlights from today: Andrew wrote his fist poem and we spent a lot of time watching videos about rainforests.

For our creative writing assignment Andrew had to write his own song to a well known tune. I went with a simple poem task instead. I asked Andrew to give me four rhyming words and then make sentences with them, paying attention to the rhythm as well. He loved doing it. The first lines came about rather quickly, it took him a little trying with the third and fourth line, but it was all done with a big smile on his face and he was very pleased with his outcome. 

We traveled back to the rainforests of the world today in our geography lesson. After reading about the birds and animals that live on different levels in the jungle, we searched for some good video clips to watch. There is a galore of excellent material on the YouTube. Like this one,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UczKUylZDv8&feature=fvsr

Week 34 Day 3

We had an industrious but rather uneventful school day.  Our math assignments today turned out to be rather challenging. We spent more time on reviewing money and telling time than I had thought we would. But here's the beauty of homeschooling again: I am not driven by a set number of minutes to accomplish a task, I can focus on the task or challenge and dissect it, chew on it or even sleep on it, until I understand. That is exactly what I did with Andrew. We proceeded slowly and step by step and many, many examples and exercises later, Andrew now understands. 

In science we looked at the Moon. Andrew likes the Moon. I think, all children do. Last week, when we had this Super Moon shining, we took our binoculars and looked at the Moon. It was cool. If it had not been for the mosquitoes, we would have stayed out there late gazing into the night sky. Living in the country, we should really invest into a nice telescope. The stars are amazing things.  

Week 34 Day 2

 A quiet rainy day. A perfect day to stay indoors and curl up with a good book. We did a lot of reading today - both Andrew and I. In fact, Andrew asked me if he could read more. Here's my six-year-old who could recognize only a few words last August, and now is reading books at his level by himself, a boy who is familiar with a whole package of sight words, and is able to pen down words that I dictate to him. Has he grown this year? No doubt. 

I took a look at some books in the Sonlight Core B (I searched them out on Amazon.com and most of them let you take a peek inside) - this is the next package we will be ordering for Andrew, and realized that he might benefit more from the Grade 2 Readers than Grade 1. I am still praying about it, though.

We did venture outside today for a few minutes. It was drizzling and muddy. I almost stepped onto a turtle by our dog pen. We all were fast to get our cameras out and doing our best to shield them from the rain took some nice shots. See for yourself.

Week 34 Day 1

Today was a 'Pooh' kind of a day. We finished reading "The House At Pooh Corner" and watched both Pooh VHS's we still own. There was not a whole lot to do after school work was over. The sudden rainfall ran us back inside this evening. I am thankful we took a extended lunch break and both kids got to play outside for a long time. 

We also finished learning about mountains. We did a short review and Andrew remembered a lot of the facts about mountains. Tomorrow, then we are off to the jungles of the world!

Andrew surprised me with a very nice story we did for our Creative Writing Assignment. His little tale of Ed and Pam making music was short and imaginative at the same time. Most of all it was comprehensibly logical. All his stories before had  been fun but wild with adventure and partly hard to follow. His last assignments did show he had learned how to bring everything to a nice conclusion and now, it seems, he understands the beauty of brevity and logic in a story. At least, that is what I see. 

I counted today the math lessons left - there's only 13 more. Many things are close to being done, like tomorrow we will look at our last word family. We finished learning the sight words last week. Is the school year really coming to an end soon? Hard to believe. 

Week 33 Day 5

No devastating rain today, but we still spent a lot of time outside in the morning. It was beautiful, though wet. 

School day went without hick-ups. We did a lot of reading today. Andrew read his portion in his Bible and later he finished reading "Daniel's Pet" by Alma Flor Ada (Green Light Readers Level 1). This was a fun little book as it had some questions and activities in the back. Andrew loved the craft suggestion in the book and eagerly read and followed the instructions. 

Other books of the day were "The House On At Pooh Corner", of course, (I doubt, Andrew quite gets the humor of the book yet, but he likes it and I promised to let him and Saara watch the Disney Pooh cartoons once we are finished with the book) and, for our vocabulary learning we are reading Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", the youth edition. It is a good book with good words and big pictures. And plenty of adventure. 

Our week is over. Because of the rain, our soccer practice and game have been cancelled. But it is a Mother's Day week end and most likely we will be in the kitchen baking something delicious for Mom (I bet, I am not the only Mom who bakes her own birthday and Mom's Day cakes). ;o)

To Every Mother: Have a Happy and Sweet Mother's Day!

Week 33 Day 4

Today had lots of rain in the forecast again, so we spent the better part of the morning outside. The children got to run their little hearts out and pick and eat peas in the garden. The rain has been good and both Andrew and Saara are very excited to see their sunflowers grow bigger and bigger. They are keeping a close eye on all the vegetables. It is very rare that any of the produce reaches my kitchen - a lot of it gets eaten right there in the garden! 

Because of the rain, we did most of our school work yawning. But we stayed focused and were done in time with all our letters and numbers and reading assignments and all the extra things that the teacher loves to throw in. 

Now, tomorrow we have rain again that means a pot of coffee for me and some fun activities for the kids and we are going to have a good school day despite of the stormy weather they say will hit us.