TGIF

I'm going to make this quick (relatively speaking, that is) because I'm rushing to get done, get out of the house, and get the kids off to Grandma's. =)

We read Cranberry Thanksgiving, but I didn't have any follow up activited today. I pointed out the partial view picture (when Maggie peeks around a door), which we'll hopefully work on some time next week. I decided to do some light school next week (it was originally a week off from school in my calendar), so I'm loading up on crafts & music then.

For math, we did calendar work. We skipped yesterday, which was a shame because of the Thursday/twenty work, but I reviewed that with him today anyway. He's improving, but I should really avoid skipping Thursdays for a while. Might be tough next week...

I combined yesterday's scheduled math lesson with today's. I really wanted to get today's math lesson finished this week, since it was a test. So we quickly ran through yesterday's lesson - the introduction of "0." I wasn't sure how Jimmy would react, but he absorbed it very quickly. As the book warned, he initially tried to place the "0" after the "10." Once corrected, however, it was as if he's always known of 0. Then we moved on to the test. Let me tell you, it was a huge joke. Even Caleb passed the test with flying colors. I laid 4 shapes on the table - a rectange, a square, a circle, and a triangle. First, I pointed to each shape & asked what it was. Then I asked him to point to each shape as I named it. I know I sound like a broken record, but I really can't wait to adjust his math lessons to be more challenging.

We finished up with Bible verses (Jimmy has the verses & is working on the references), handwriting (I was a very picky reviewer, and those letters were good), and reading. Jimmy read he, his, has, her, hi, it, if, is, igloo, ice, and "if he has ice, it is an igloo" - I know it's a silly sentence, but it helped his confidence to have most of the words be what he had just read individually.

That's all for now! Time to get showered, load the car, and drive off into the sunset. (Ok, notsomuch the sunset part, but you get the idea...)

Check it out - new blog feature!

By popular demand (ok, by being asked by 2 people what something meant), I have added a glossary of terms. Look to the right side of the screen. You'll finally find out what I mean by FIAR and LotW. Enjoy!

The seasons

We skipped lessons yesterday because of a weird nap schedule. They didn't fall asleep until after 3:30, and didn't wake up until 7pm. Wouldn't have been so bad except that we used the morning to run errands. I had been planning on having lessons once Jimmy woke up from his nap, since he generally wakes up first. Oh well! Good thing we have time next week.

We read Cranberry Thanksgiving again. The boys really like it, especially the parts about Mr. Whiskers. Today's activity was to talk about the seasons. Jimmy named all four seasons (with a little prompting about summer... he got confused because fall can also be called autumn, so he named it twice, coming up with four seasons without summer). Then I asked him to tell me something special about each season. Fall - "The leaves fall off of the trees & they are all different colors." Winter - this is funny - "The rain falls out of the sky & becomes snow so all the little kids can go snowboarding." Summer - "It gets warm." I raised an eyebrow. "It gets soooo hot!" Spring - "The plants grow & grow & grow & grow!" I think he gets it.

Math went very well. He did another great calendar lesson. Tomorrow might be difficult because it is a changing of the 10's & it is a Thursday. But I asked him what tomorrow would be in both days of the week (he answered correctly with Thursday) and date (he also answered correctly with 20 after thinking for a moment). So maybe we'll be alright. I decided to skip two of the math activity lessons. They were both on shapes, which is well below Jimmy's level. These lessons were on triangles & squares. We had done similar lessons on rectangles & circles, which went well... but probably only because it was a fun game. I don't want to overdo it on the easy stuff or he'll get bored. I can't wait until I can look through the manual to modify things to Jimmy's level. Anyway, today's lesson was on numbers 1-10. While this is also below Jimmy, I felt there was enough game factor to keep him interested, plus tomorrow's lesson builds off of this & introduces 0. I'm not sure he understands 0 very well yet, so it will be a good lesson. We used numbers cards for 1-10. I laid them out randomly on the table & had him line them up in order. Then we played a game. First, he took one of the cards & hid it (mixing up the remaining cards). I had to guess which number was missing. Then I took a card & he had to guess. I took number 10, thinking it would be harder to guess since there wasn't an empty space when he lined them back up. He still got it!

We went over our Bible verses for this week. I had him repeat the verses after me 3 times. It's still funny to hear him try to pronounce "strengthens" but he's getting there. Then we started handwriting. I was very impressed! His H, h, I, and i's all looked very readable. He's going to have to work a little on making the H's not so wide and the dots of the i's a little more distinct than the lines, but he did very well. I decided that we won't be making up yesterday's handwriting lesson - we'll do a full review of all of the letters up to I instead.

I had been planning to do music as an additional lesson today, but Jimmy asked very nicely if we could read one of his level 1 readers. So Jimmy read (with a little help from me) Thomas Goes Fishing. He did pretty well, although it was obvious that he has memorized a bunch of it. (He read "funny" as "silly.") He still gets a little frustrated & doesn't want to sound out the words if he doesn't immediately know them. It's probably going to be a long process to get him to read, but I have a funny feeling that he'll be a voracious reader when that happens.

Thanksgiving

That's the word of the week - Thanksgiving. We're reading Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende & Harry Devlin this week for FIAR. It's about a grandmother & granddaughter who try to invite one person each to Thanksgiving dinner - someone who is lonely or poor. The grandmother gets an unexpected lesson in judging someone from their appearances.

Today's FIAR activity didn't go exactly as planned. We have a book written by Barbara Rainey about the history of Thanksgiving, so I thought that would be a great go-along to explain the origins of this holiday. Sigh. I didn't realize it was so in-depth. Don't get me wrong - it's fabulous to learn the nitty gritty details. I just wish I had opened it earlier to decide if a squirmy 4 yo could sit through it. Plan A didn't work so much, but I'm not giving up. Plan B will be to find more age-appropriate explanations of Thanksgiving to try later this week. Or maybe we'll do that next week (I don't have any plans for school next week). A friend had asked what Thanksgiving crafts I had planned, which made me realize that I had completely whiffed on that. Another sigh. So maybe we can do crafts & light history next week. The phrase "the best laid plans" comes to mind.

Math was pretty interesting today. Jimmy did very well on calendar work (he's really getting excited about Thanksgiving now; he's noticing that it's getting closer & he realized that it was the holiday in our book). We're keeping this up, though, to help him with Thursdays, 13, 20, and 30. The math activity proved to be finally challenging. We used pattern blocks (always a bit hit around here). First, Jimmy filled in a pattern that showed which shapes to place where. Then Jimmy had to fill in 3 different shapes that did not show which shapes to use. He figured out right away that he wasn't going to find the exact match to what was on the paper. For 2 of the 3 patterns, he was able to pick out the necessary pieces immediately. The middle of the patterns gave him a little challenge, but he didn't get frustrated. He stopped, thought about the problem, carefully positioned the pieces he did place, and identified the piece that would fill in the gap. Caleb had his own pattern to fill in, and he did very well... until he got bored and wandered away. =)

This week's letters are H and I. To start the week, I read the Bible verses we'll be memorizing ("Honor your father and your mother." Exodus 20:12 and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13) along with the stories in the book that help explain what the verse really means. I was amazed at how well Jimmy understood the concept that Jesus gives us spiritual muscles ("all things" being all the things that God commands us to do), but he had a surprising amount of trouble getting what "honor" meant. That certainly explains a lot. LOL!

Yesterday & Today

Totally forgot to update this yesterday. Yeesh!

So.... yesterday's lessons went well. We did math, and Jimmy had a minor struggle with his calendar work. It was the 13th, and he has problems with numbers between 12 and 20, and then again at the 10's from then on. I'm going to give him lots of opportunities to count this month by having him count all the days. He also has a little trouble remembering Thursday, so we'll work on memorizing the days of the week a little more. Our math activity was a big milestone - his first test! Which he aced. He was actually bored & asked when we were going to do something. After I finished the questions, he kept playing with the linking cubes to do something more challenging. The test involved me laying out 8 unlinked blue linking cubes. Jimmy had to count them, then make a row of yellow linking cubes to match (I gave him a pile of 10 yellow cubes). After the test, he decided to make a blue-yellow pattern out of the linking cubes.

Normally, on Thursdays, we would make lap books for the FIAR book and for the LotW. Since we didn't have a FIAR book this week & I wanted to spend time doing music, I decided to postpone the letter G book another day. So Jimmy recited his Bible verse (nailed it), practiced writing G and g, & read several words that start with the letter G. At one point, he got frustrated trying to write, but I lavished praise on what he had already done (which was deserved - his letters were very good), he regained his confidence & wrote even better letters. He had a little trouble reading the words, but they were rather difficult words. I tried to include a lot of trends, such as the "gr" sound, to make it a little easier. That seemed to work pretty well. I know he has the ability to learn to read; he just needs to see progress to keep from being overwhelmed.

For music, I brought out a new toy - rhythm sticks! We learned some different ways that the sticks could be used, but then we stuck to tapping the thinner smooth stick against the thicker ridged stick. We tapped along to She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Jimmy was able to keep the rhythm better when he focused on tapping instead of singing. Caleb seemed to prefer the method of rubbing the smooth stick over the ridged stick, so I didn't get much of a chance to see what rhythm he felt. =)

For today's lessons, we read a pseudo-FIAR book. It's The Little Puppy by Judy & Phoebe Dunn. Last year, we read the Before FIAR book The Little Rabbit by the same author/photographer. I was hoping to re-read that along with The Little Puppy, but the library didn't get it in on time. The boys both enjoyed The Little Puppy, though, so no harm. It was nice to have a break from the FIAR books, but it was sweet to get back into reading with two eager little learners sitting on my lap.

Math today went very well. Jimmy did much better at his calendar work (14 is a much easier number than 13 and Friday is easier to remember than Thursday). He very proudly announced the correct date on the first try. The math activity bored him again. I can't wait to get a chance to review what we're doing this year to try to keep him challenged. The approach that this curriculum takes seems to fit very nicely with Jimmy's learning style, so he might just need to move up to a higher level. I'm going to see if I can borrow a 1st grade level book (he's currently doing grade K) to see if it would better suit him or if it would be too much right now. My mother-in-law has also offered to check what homeschooling families in her church are using. I'm a little hesitant about being overwhelmed by options, but it's certainly better than being underwhelmed! It will be good to at least know what else is out there in case the 1st grade level proves to be too much for Jimmy right now.

After math (yes, I'm back on track now), we finished up with our letter work. Jimmy recited his F & G Bible verses - very nicely, I might add, although he needed some coaxing to sit still enough to be understandable. Then he colored in & cut out some pictures of things that start with G. I glued them into his lapbook then showed him how to write their names. His handwriting is getting pretty good. We have to work on letter height, though... his "l" was the same height as his "i". Our work on his little g has made a big improvement on his little a, too.

So, another week over. The boys are spending the weekend with their Oma (my mother-in-law) so that Randy & I can tackle some things around the house. See you next week! We'll be reading Cranberry Thanksgiving.

Leaf and let leaf

Yesterday, I wrote "Thanksgiving" on our math calendar. There are no numbers (we write the date in each day), so it's just the word in a square. I explained that I wrote it on Thanksgiving, when we'll have a big meal with our whole family. I wasn't sure, tho, if Jimmy would understand the concept of it being a finite number of days away. Today, he showed that he did understand - without prompting, he counted the number of days until Thanksgiving. =) And as yesterday, he did fabulously on the rest of the lesson. Spelling the different words (we spell the month & the day of the week) seems to be working to help him remember them. Today, Jimmy noticed that all of our months so far all end in "ber" & that the days of the week all end in "day." Smart cookie.

For our math activity, we made a bar graph. (The lesson we skipped was making a pictograph of the same thing.) I pulled out some family pictures, and Jimmy chose linking cubes to represent each person's hair color. To protect those in denial, I won't tell you how many of each color Jimmy graphed... LOL! As with all of our graphs, Jimmy identified the tallest column, the shortest column, and any columns that had the same number of blocks.

Then we reviewed all of the Bible verses so far. Jimmy flew through all of them, including last week's F verse (it's the first time he didn't stumble even a little). He very nearly has the G verse. He practiced his handwriting next - big G and little g. He's doing very well & he really likes the star system. I draw stars under the good letters, which gives him confidence but also shows him what letters are not good (and gives us an opportunity to talk about why they aren't good). Tomorrow, we'll add some review work to the handwriting lesson so he doesn't forget A-F.

I had originally planned to do art today, but the boys enjoyed being outside yesterday. So today, we had more PE. We took a walk, then the boys played with their scooter/Cozy Coupe & their balls. I took the opportunity to get the leaves out of the driveway. The boys still don't like the leaf blower, but at least they're no longer terrified. Caleb was even brave enough to "rescue" his Cozy Coupe from the Evil Leaf Blower of Doom.

Loose day

I decided to skip the math lesson planned for today (the one we skipped yesterday). I read ahead, and tomorrow's math lesson was a review of the same one, so I'll just do it all then. I had a choice to jump ahead to tomorrow's lesson (gaining ground on the school year) or to have a very light school day. I opted for the latter. Two reasons - 1) I'm planning on revamping our math lessons soon, so we'll probably already be finishing math very early this year and 2) I wanted to take advantage of the extra time to play outside. It's a beautiful day!

So we started with calendar work. Jimmy is becoming quite the expert! I'm going to have to look into what else we can do with the calendar to make it more challenging for him. I already know that he struggles with the higher numbers, so for now, we'll focus on maintaining what he already knows, counting higher numbers, and looking forward to future events.

Next, we worked on LofW - G. Jimmy & I repeated the memory verse 3 times, then he gave it a shot on his own (not too bad, just some stumbles over the new words: "preach" and "gospel"). I also asked him to recite the F verse. Then we looked at the letter chart to see what a G and g look like. He wrote 4 or 5 of each. His big G's looked pretty good... until he got lazy at the end. His little g's were very nice. We are still working on the circle-line (same problem he has with little a's), but all of his letters today were very readable. He is much more excited about handwriting now & he is a lot more confident.

Then... we played outside. Hey, PE is a school subject, right? =) We took a walk up our street, then played in the leaves in our front yard, then played with Caleb's Cosy Coupe, Jimmy's scooter, and my basketball hoop. I'd love for this to have tired them out enough to take a nice, loooong nap!

After a quick, warm lunch, I gave them both baths. We did our singing & rhythm lessons during their bath. The bath should also help their naps. Hey, a girl can dream!

Non-FIAR week

When I planned out the school year, I realized that I had 26 weeks of school (1 for each letter in the alphabet), but only 19 Five-in-a-Row books. For some weeks, I planned some topic studies, like reading age-appropriate books on slavery after we read Who Owns the Sun? For other weeks, I planned to re-read some BFIAR (Before FIAR, which Jimmy did last year). This week was originally planned to be a BFIAR week with The Little Rabbit by Judy & Phoebe Dunn. We also own The Little Puppy (same authors), so I thought it would be nice to study both together.

Well, the library didn't get The Little Rabbit transferred on time. So I did a quick re-think. We're going to have a FIAR-free week of school. If The Little Rabbit gets to our library on time, we might read the 2 Dunn books on Friday. Otherwise, we're going to use that time to do some other things.

Today, we started with math. Jimmy did amazingly well at his calendar work. He read today's date without me first reading it or even pointing out the different parts of the date. I think I'm going to relax the calendar work for a while, letting him guide things there. He still needs some work on the days of the week (particularly Thursdays - he seems to have a mental block against "th" sounds), but otherwise, we'll just fill in the date, follow our color pattern, and read today's date. I added something new to this work - I wrote Thanksgiving Day into the calendar. It will be fun to watch him look forward to it on our calendar. Of course, this means we'll be doing at least calendar work on our Thanksgiving break. =)

For the math activity, I skipped the next lesson because I wasn't prepared. I forgot to cut out slips of paper to represent our family's hair colors. So we'll try to do that lesson tomorrow. Today, we did more pattern work with linking cubes. Jimmy, of course, did fantastically well. Caleb was getting into the mix, too. He made a tower of blocks that came really close to our ABB pattern! Then when it was time to break the tower apart & count them, he counted along with us.

After math, I introduced the letter of the week - G. We read the new Bible verse & the story that helps explain it. This week's verse is "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15) The story prompted us to review our F verse, which was fantastic since Jimmy still needs a little more practice on that one. It also got us talking about the Gospel. Jimmy needed a little prodding, but once he figured out what I was asking, he was able to clearly tell me the good news. "Jesus died, which was bad, but this was good news because it took away our sins."

Now for the fun part - with the time we saved from not doing FIAR, we painted with watercolors! Caleb has a book that already has the color on the pages - you just smear a wet paint brush over the pages to "paint" the picture. Jimmy & I painted on plain construction paper. At first, Jimmy was painting stripes of color on his paper. But once I started painting a picture (brown mountains with green grass, blue sky, and a yellow sun), he realized that he could paint a picture of something. He asked for a new piece of paper, then painted a face. I think it was of me... Not sure, but it did have long hair. LOL!

Tastebuds experiment - pictures

Jimmy tried lemon juice first. Pucker power!

Next was salt water. Jimmy is definitely NOT a fan. Yuck!
Last was sugar water. Big surprise - Jimmy liked it! =)

Tastebuds experiment

For today's lessons, we started with math. Jimmy did very well at his calendar work. He read today's date without me pointing at the parts that make up today's date (Saturday, November 8th, 2008). He is still having some trouble with the days of the week, but he's getting better as he memorizes it more & feels more comfortable reading. The teacher's guide has him spelling out many of the words, which I didn't understand at first (it's a math book not language arts), but I can see a big jump in his understanding since the spelling part was added in. I think it makes him pay more attention to the actual word instead of simply the placement on the page.

For the activity part of math, we played with teddy bear counters. We ran through the story in the book first. The workmat (a piece of construction paper) was our pretend bus. We lined up teddy bears at the bus stop (off of the map). Some bears got on the bus, some bears got off of the bus. We counted the bears on the bus after each change. Then it was Jimmy's time to make up a story about the bears on the bus. This was his 2nd time to make up a math story. This story was much more elaborate than the last story lesson. I wasn't sure we would be able to eat lunch on time! =)

We finished our F week for letter-of-the-week. Jimmy recited his Bible verse very well (with some hiccups, but we'll just make sure to review it again during next week). I gave him a mini-independent working assignment - he was to write some big F's and some little f's (the number was up to him). He wasn't to give it to me to review until he had written all of his F & f's. This task was partly to teach him to start doing some independent work... but mostly to allow me to spend some time with Caleb, who was acting out a little. The snuggle time with Caleb helped the rest of the lesson time, and the independent work of Jimmy gave him a lot of confidence. Win-win! Oh, and Jimmy's letters were fantastic!

Finally it was time for our FIAR book. We read Lentil for the last time this week. This time, I focused more on the lemon that the mean character eats (it makes the band pucker up, leaving them unable to play on a very special occasion). After the reading, we had a very special experiment. I gave Jimmy 3 cups to taste. The 1st contained lemon juice. He wasn't sure if he liked it - it reminded him of lemons (good) but also of pickles (not good). The 2nd contained salt water. Jimmy tasted salt water during our How to Make an Apple Pie & See the World lessons (our 1st week of school this year), so he knew exactly what it was. And he definitely didn't like it. The 3rd cup had sugar water. This, as you can imagine, was a huge hit. After tasting each cup, I explained a little about tastebuds. I wasn't expecting him to understand much of it (the goal was merely to lay some groundwork), but he surprised me with how much he could understand.

Audiobookworms

Mommy's not the only one who loves books! The boys have really gotten into read-along books. I remember really liking them as a kid (thanks, Mom!). My favorite was Thumbellina. I wonder what their favorites will be?

Mommy's ongoing education

I currently have 55 books on my to-read list. Life is good!!! LOL! But the really nerdy part is that I want to get through these quickly so I can move on to read... nerd alert... history books and biographies (I warned you). I never got into those topics in school, but I've found that I actually really enjoy them if told in an interesting storyteller style. It's a lot more exciting when you're not doing it to memorize facts for a test. So far, I've read about Abigail Adams and Abraham Lincoln. I had no idea about dear ol' Abe!!! I'm not sure what my next targets will be, but I figure with 55 other books in line, I've got some time.

Arts & crafts

Yesterday, as we read Lentil, I pointed out the essential elements of a story - setting the stage (location, characters, etc), rising action/conflict, climax, and resolution. I hadn't actually realized that there were a few mini-climaxes in the book until then. Today's Lentil task was the lapbook. We pasted the music for She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain, a picture of a harmonica (which Jimmy colored & cut out), and a map where Jimmy found Ohio (where the book takes place) and New Jersey (where we live). We also caught up on the lapbooks from our last 2 FIAR books - Very Last First Time and Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel.

Math was more calendar. Update - Jimmy read today's date very, very well! He is very proud of himself. We did patterns with linking cubes yesterday & teddy bear counters today. I allowed Jimmy to go a lot more advanced than the book today. The book was working on AB patterns, but he also made ABB and ABC patterns. I think I'll take our Thanksgiving break to review how we're going to proceed with our math lessons. He can definitely skip ahead, but I need time to plan it out well.

Letter of the Week is going well. He has very nearly memorized this week's Bible verse. By tomorrow, he'll have it down pat. His handwriting has taken a huge leap. He is a lot more confident. We did our F lapbook today, but we also did C, D, & E's lapbooks to catch up. That might have been a little too much writing (the lapbooks are filled with pictures he colors, cuts out, and labels by copying my labels). We did the lapbooks in order & ended with "football." That may have cured the letter/handwriting overdose. Football is a long word, but an easy one with easy letters. Plus, he was really excited about writing it. I'm going to start looking into some more advanced writing tasks for him, probably over my starting-to-get-very-full Thanksgiving break. I might be able to use something from the phonics book we tried to use last year. Hey, I might even be able to trick him into reading that way! LOL!

Today's lessons

I had so much fun with today's lessons! Good thing, too... this morning didn't particularly go well. Think hyper, early morning risers meet mom-who-stayed-up-to-watch-the-election-results. Sigh.

We started by reading this week's FIAR book - Lentil. It was funny listening to Jimmy try to pronounce "harmonica" but he actually got very close. We reviewed states & the name of our country (altho he thinks it should be America States). I told him that a new President of the United States was elected yesterday, and we helped by voting. (I didn't mention that the guy I voted for didn't win...) Our FIAR lesson was combined with our weekly music lesson. I gently introduced fractions by writing out music with linking cubes. Some notes used more linking cubes than others. We sang 2 songs (She'll Be Comin' Around the Mountain, which was used in Lentil, and Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, which made an interesting linking cube display). I taped out the beat on each individual cube so the boys could see how long it took to sing some notes & how short it took to sing others. This was a big hit. I think we should use this more to teach rhythm.

Next was our Saxon math lesson. Jimmy did fantastic on the calendar portion. I'm still planning on doing this every day, but we can definitely back off by the middle-to-end of the year. The book is starting to make things fun by adding spelling. This is really going to help Jimmy's letter lessons. The activity portion was a bit hectic. I had cut out small circles, big circles, small rectangles, and big rectangles. We worked on sorting by color, then arranging in rows & columns by color, shape & size. This was definitely beneath Jimmy, but interestingly enough, Caleb really got into it.

We did the LotW stuff last. The Bible verse is pretty long, but Jimmy is doing alright. We went over it piece by piece 3 times, then I helped him recite it. It's not quite memorized yet, but he'll get it. He wrote big F and little f each several times. Big F, as I predicted, was cake for him. It's just big E without one of the lines. Little f, tho, surprised me - he got it right away! I guess something clicked last week when reviewing C & c. I thought for sure that the little hook at the top would throw him off. We added something new to handwriting as an incentive - I draw little stars under the good letters. He really liked that.

So far this week...

On Monday, we finished Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel. We haven't yet made the lapbook (we also need to make a lapbook for Very Last First Time, as well as lapbooks for C, D, & E), but I'm hoping to do that during this week's art lessons. Our last Mike Mulligan lesson was a math lesson, which was especially timely since I had planned on skipping the rather dull Saxon math lesson that day. Anyway, we talked about Mike's brag that Mary Anne (the steam shovel) could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week. One hundred is still a little out of Jimmy's comprehension, so I simplified it. "If one hundred men could dig one penny's worth a day, how many could they dig in a week?" We used the Saxon calendar to help us count. Then we increased that to 2 pennies, 3 pennies, 4 pennies, and 5 pennies. I wanted to be sure we counted higher than 30, since Jimmy was having trouble with the 10's during our calendar lessons. This was a very light introduction to multiplication. For our formal math lessons, as I've said, we just stuck with the calendar lesson. It was our first day in November, and Jimmy understood the change a lot better than for October. Understandably so, since October was his first month change lesson. He is a lot more comfortable in the lower number days, too. We really need to work on higher number counting. We finished up D & E letter of the week - Jimmy had the Bible verses down pat, and he even started writing some words. We stuck mostly with words that had a/b/c/d/e, but I did sneak in Caleb's name. The little "l" wasn't too hard, and Jimmy thought it was a lot of fun. He needs me to keep handwriting extra fun for him since he's not all that interested just yet. I am hoping to get him more interested in words in general with some computer games and read-along books

Yesterday's lessons started a new book - Lentil by Robert McCloskey. We had read a McCloskey book last year - Blueberries for Sal, which I have in a read-along format. I'm hoping to have Jimmy "read along" with the cassette sometime this week. Yesterday was Election Day, so it was very cool to have our "I voted" stickers for this lesson. We discussed geography. I had Jimmy find Ohio on the map (the setting of the book) & I showed him where New Jersey is. Then I counted the states. I showed him the flag on the stickers & explained that the 13 stripes represent the original 13 states. Jimmy guessed that there are 50 stars for the 50 states. He's such a smart little guy! Then we had our math lesson, with a calendar lesson (he's improving on days of the week & becoming more confident on telling today's date) and a pattern block/sorting lesson. Caleb, of course, really liked playing with the pattern blocks. For letter-of-the-week, I introduced the letter F, shared this week's Bible verse (John 3:16 - how fun!), and told the story in the Bible verse book. Jimmy was really excited that we can give Jesus gifts by helping people & singing praise songs. When it was time for naps, we sang the song from Lentil (She'll be comin' round the mountain) as our gift to Jesus.

I am hoping to have a lot more music in this week's lessons. Lentil is a cute story about a little boy who wants to sing but has absolutely no singing talent. Instead, he saves up money to buy a harmonica. He practices very hard every day until he gets good. He ends up playing his harmonica for the most important citizen in his town. This is a good reminder to practice music. And let me tell you, No-Rhythm Jimmy could use some practice! LOL!