We're baaaaack!

We're back from our travels. Actually, we've been back for a while. I just haven't posted... Bad Di! LOL! While we were traveling, we finished Very Last First Time. We found Ungava Bay (the setting of the book) on a map, we talked about the silly "very last first" wording, and we chose colors that reflected various moods (the author colored her pictures with different colors as the character felt different things). Jimmy learned his Bible verse very well but had trouble writing C's. After ending that first week, we put school on hold for a little while. Jimmy was having trouble concentrating and we were bouncing around a lot more during the second week. Then we took another week off after coming home so the boys could get back into their nap & sleeping routines & so I could get the house back in shape.

We started school back up again this week. Tuesday was our first lesson this week. We're reading Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. This book was one of Randy's favorites growing up. On Tuesday, we discussed "personification" (Jimmy was nearly able to pronounce it, but you should have heard Caleb try!) - the steam shovel is obviously not alive but Mike named her Mary Anne. We talked about people with names, pets with names (they can think, even though they can't talk), and toys with names (they are not alive b/c they can't think). I told them that people name all sorts of things that are not alive, like boats or cars. Jimmy named the red maple tree in our front yard - Maple Fall. On Wednesday, we talked about stewardship, since Mike takes very good care of Mary Anne. We also got into bragging & taking advantage of someone. In the story, Mike brags that Mary Anne can dig a lot more than he's sure she can dig. He bets that she can dig a whole cellar for a town hall in one day or the town doesn't have to pay him. A townsperson takes him up on the offer, fully believing that Mike & Mary Anne won't be able to do it. We talked about how both of them acted badly. Yesterday, we experimented with steam. Don't worry - I didn't let the boys get too close! =) I boiled some water on the stove with them looking on from a chair at the other end of the counter. They saw the water vapor as the pot boiled on. Then I put a lid on the pot & they saw the steam concentrate in a few streams. Finally, I pushed the lid down so that only 1 steam stream was left. They heard the whistle & saw how powerful the stream was getting. Today, we looked at the trees Burton drew. Her trees have obvious tree branches. There are scenes that have trees with leaves and other scenes with trees with no leaves. The subject today was art, so Jimmy drew tree trucks with branches - some with leaves & some without. We'll put those trees in this week's FIAR lapbook.

In math this week, Jimmy is making pretty good progress in the calendar lessons. He's having trouble with numbers over 29, so we'll make sure to add higher level counting to his lessons. He's doing better with days of the week, mostly because he's trying as hard as possible to not read. Stinker. He's having a lot more fun with it because he knows that he's getting the right answers. I can see a lot of myself in him - we pick things up easily & so get bored easily, but if a tough thing comes up, we get frustrated & tend to give up. I'll have to find ways to keep him motivated in both circumstances. In his other math lessons, we've introduced sorting & storytelling. Jimmy knew all about sorting before these lessons, so I mainly focused on the following directions part of the lesson. He knew what I was going to ask him to do, but I required him to wait until I actually told him to do something. Storytelling came in today. We played with counting bears, making up stories about up to 5 bears playing on a playground (the work mat). Some bears would go to the playground, some would leave the playground. It's an obvious introduction to addition & subtraction. Jimmy really enjoyed it & had fun making up his own story.

Because of our 2 week break, I did a little juggling in our school schedule. I am trying to allow extra time at the end of the year for make-up time if anything happens (last year, I was sick several times, leaving me without a voice). So instead of just pushing back the schedule, I rearranged things to fit in our current schedule. I want to make sure we are reading Cranberry Thanksgiving in the week before Thanksgiving, and I want to keep the Christmas stories & winter stories in their appropriate time frames as well. So I dropped one book (it was a Before FIAR book, so we had already read it last year) & merged two books (also BFIAR) into one week. Math was fine, since we had lots of wiggle room - less lessons than teaching days. Letter of the Week was an interesting challenge. I decided to put D & E in this week and H & I in the week before Thanksgiving. Those 4 letters should be fairly easy for Jimmy to learn to write. I think it worked out very well this week. He was at first reluctant to write his letters (very reminiscent of last year's reading lesson battles), so I eased off. It was a little worrisome since I had a goal of 2 letters for the week. But it paid off - he very happily wrote all of his letters to date yesterday. His A & a's were a little rusty, but he loved the practice. His C's have improved tremendously. I think his frustration was over not being able to make a decent C during the last week of school. Now he feels more confident & is happy about writing again. His D, d, E, and e's have been very good. The Bible verses posed a small challenge, but it only meant that he didn't have them memorized on the first day of the week. All in all, this double letter week has gone very well. Plus, it added enough letters to his repetitiore that we can start writing words as part of the lessons. I am hoping that will encourage his reading.