Last night's Super Bowl got us to bed a bit late and we started our school day later than usual. Still, we covered everything and more, except the science lesson. There are some major taste test coming and I would love to take my time with it. I can not wait, it should be fun!Today, we started learning about the whole and the halves, about the dollar and half a dollar, we counted by 50s to 1000 and then ate our school work - the apple halves. I had forgotten how much Andrew likes to tell stories. His language task today asked him to elaborate on a couple of sentences and he gave me two pages of a rather fantastic story. I had to remind him to finish it up. These kind of exercises are really good. Although Andrew has still to learn how to keep a story short and sweet, he has learned how to develop a story-line and how to reign it in once I tell him it is time to finish. And he loves to hear me read him back his own stories. Here, I have to tell something what happened during the week end. I had borrowed a DVD from the library not paying much attention what exactly I had picked up. The cover showed a picture of Peter the Rabbit and it had big letters of Beatrix Potter on it. So home it came with us. As it was raining, I popped it in and settled down with my kids to watch what I thought would be a movie. Well, it was a movie-ballet. To my surprise, Andrew and Saara both watched the whole thing. I had never developed an appreciation for this art, but it seems my kids are made of a different material. Good for them.
We managed to avoid the downpour this morning and had a good time at the library. I like that Ms. Bobbie is tackling the long vowels now along with the usual letter sounds. Today, the story time craft was about 'the alphabet soup'. It made Andrew mighty hungry.Today was also the Groundhog Day. I think, every culture, especially up north where a lot of the wildlife hibernates has a day like this. In Estonia the bear turns over to the other side and sleeps on because half of the winter is still ahead. Over here we deal with rodents, however.
We watched a really good story on the YouTube (by MOnatureKids) about the groundhog. Also, we read an article in the HighlightsKids.com on groundhog's burrow and we made a pop-up picture of the animal (http://www.highlightskids.com/crafts/groundhog-day-pop-toy). But now it is storming outside. Quite a wet end to our school week. If I was a groundhog, I would not poke my nose out of my burrow. Not today.
My children love to eat. They are not truly picky (thank you, Jesus) and munch happily on the healthy stuff (double thank you, Jesus). They also love to talk about food. That I found out today when we read our science portion for the day. It was all about healthy life style: food, exercise, personal hygiene, and sleep. Both children grew a bit quiet when I explained that their bodies grow during the night time and that is why they need to go to bed early and fall asleep fast. I do hope, they will practice this truth, for going to sleep is not fun when there's still so much to do and explore.
This year, Andrew is receiving the Highlights for Kids magazine and as our reading practice we read from the Sci (or science) pages today. The bite size information was interesting (they talked about dinosaurs - of course it is interesting!) and it touched subjects we have covered in our science classes but have never really talked about. Like the birds being territorial or why is the ocean water so salty. Good stuff. Even better when Andrew was reading most of the article by himself.
The rainy morning did not tamper with our school day. It was rather a miracle that even I was able to run without a cup of coffee. Andrew accomplished his tasks well and without his customary 'day-dreamer' attitude.
I found myself counting how many lessons are left in our math book. The school year has been flying past so fast ... Tomorrow is February 1, and I have only four more months left to teach. Oh, I do not want to even go there - I am not ready to bid farewell to all the fun we have had. Tomorrow is another school day, let's enjoy that to the fullest.
I have a sort of a rule that whenever Daddy is home, we do not have school. Daddy was home today, but he had to take off to town, so it was us three again and out came the Sonlight instructor's guide. I had not planned anything for today, but this is one of the reasons, I like Sonlight, I can just take the guide and have a school day even without much preparation.
We have had rather busy evenings recently and were behind our Read Aloud schedule. This morning we caught up with all our chapters. The book we are reading talks a lot about a grandmother's button basket. I remember how much I loved my Mom's button tin. Today, I started one of my own. I spread all my button stash on the table and had the kids sort them and then drop them into a brightly colored tin which is perfect for fun stuff like buttons.
We continued our studies of the human body with the brain and the five senses. I found some fun kid-oriented video clips on the YouTube about how our ears and noses work. There were good informational clips about eyes and tongue and taste buds as well. But it was more fun to do things ourselves, like the feeling with our fingertips. Not long ago we read the story about how Braille came to invent the reading system for the blind. The children remembered the story well and I had grabbed a couple of Braille cards from the library at one time, they became very useful teaching tools not only to illustrate the story but also by giving the children a 'glimpse' into what does it mean to rely on your fingers and touch when reading and not your eyes.
I was afraid that all this volume of new information would get Andrew confused. It did not! At the same time, let us see how much he remembers tomorrow...
We finished our very productive school day with some science activities. Right now it is all about the human body and the functions of its different organs. We already had measured our lung capacity, so today we focused on breathing and why we breathe faster when we run. Both kids loved the little experiment of measuring how many times they breathed when standing still and after running in place for a while.
We also did a little reviewing of the water cycle because it fit perfectly into our other science activity - making the invisible water in the air become visible. All it took was a cold surface. Just like water droplets condensate up in the air to make rain, Mom's tea glass had water 'magically' appear on the outside of the glass. Cool.
One of my favorite quotes is by Reba Mcentire: "To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone." We went over our bones today again and I had the kids match the stickers with bone names with the right bones on their bodies. It was fun.
Also, I used a piece of elastic tape to demonstrate how our muscles move by stretching and contracting.
We spent a considerable amount of time learning the digestive system. There were a few new words for Andrew to remember, like saliva, acid, digest, etc. So we took it slowly and we will go over all of it tomorrow again.
Andrew may not know what a funny bone looks like or where it is located in his body, but he definitely has one. We reviewed the organs and I pointed at the lungs asking Andrew what those were. Andrew said: "Gills." (as a true fisherman would). I said, no, Andrew, we are not fish, what are those things. Andrew: "The air compressor!" Feel free, have a laugh!
