Back to school

We took a bit of a break while we traveled around. First, Randy & I went on a youth retreat as chaperones (when did we become responsible adults???). The boys spent the weekend with my inlaws. Then, we went to Virginia to help move Randy's grandparents (they moved to nursing homes near my inlaws) & to help clean out their house before the sale. We spent a few days afterwards at home recovering, and then we headed back to the greater Philly area to celebrate Caleb's 3rd birthday with various parts of the family. Whew. It's good to be home.

Before we started The Whirlwind, Jimmy finished his school week on Katy and the Big Snow. Jimmy drew a picture of a city, just like Virginia Lee Burton did in the middle of Katy. However, Jimmy had been facinated by the firetrucks in the book, so his city was entirely on fire. Boys. On Friday, he practiced counting by 5's, just like VLB did with horses to explain Katy's 55 horsepower engine in the beginning of the book. Since I didn't have 55 horses with us, we used pennies. We did 2 math lessons, including one using a new math material - a geoboard with geobands (a pegged grid used with rubberbands). We finished up the LotW, M, with reviews of the Bible verse & handwriting.

During our travels, we occasionally read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. We read it last year during B4FIAR, so it was an excellent light review week with a tie-in to our winter theme this January. I have to say, the weather has been very good to our winter unit study. Our house has has snow on the ground almost every day (by the time it finally melts, another storm steps up to pile on some more snow), and it was VERY cold in Virginia. Not so good for packing a moving truck, but very good to help re-enforce our winter lessons.

Now that we're back for a while now, it's time to jump back into school. This week's FIAR book is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. FIAR recommends using the edition illustrated by Susan Jeffers. Oh, is this a gorgeous book! Unlike most of the weekly lessons in FIAR, this book is focused on language & art (as opposed to also including social studies, science, & math). It was meant as a light lesson during a review week, but I'm using it instead to allow us time to rejuvenate our art time. I have to confess that art is my homeschooling weekness.

Today's FIAR lesson took an interesting turn today. It started as a simple observation exercise - listen to the rhyming to find the pattern. (Hint: it's an AABA pattern - the 3rd line of each stanza doesn't rhyme with the rest until the last stanza.) The book breaks the lines up for the illustrations, so we used a version I found online for this exercise. Jimmy was confused at first, but by the 2nd stanza, he knew exactly what to look for. I am hoping to continue this lesson into next week, when we read lots of various poetry. Anyway, after we "read" the rhyming pattern, I felt that Jimmy still didn't quite understand rhyming in poetry. He knows when words rhyme, but he didn't seem to understand the concept of a line rhyming with another rhyme. So we wrote our own poetry. Jimmy, Daddy, and I collaborated to write this, er, elegant verse... See if you can tell Jimmy's contribution.

Caleb
Caleb turned three,
Then he has to pee
On a tree.
Not on me!

After FIAR, we worked on math. This was a perfect lesson to follow a break - we reviewed the geoboard. Jimmy had to make 4 different shapes with a geoband on the geoboard. Jimmy made a triangle, a rectangle, a square, and then, because he was being silly, a shoe. LOL! He did very well on his calendar work, even with such a big gap. I think he's ready to stop reviewing the calendar every day. A few times a week should be just fine.

For LotW, we're double teaming this week. While traveling, Jimmy practiced writing N & n, but we didn't do any Bible verse work. Plus, his N & n's weren't very good with all of the distractiongs. So this week, we're splitting the week into N and O. Today, we read the story explaining the N Bible verse, practiced reciting the verse, and practiced writing N & n. Jimmy also asked to review writing M, m, L, l, B, and b. We'll start the letter O work on Wednesday (since he had a headstart on N, it will get the shorter "half" of the week).