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!