My Five-Year-Old!

Tuesday was Caleb’s birthday. I can’t believe my youngest is five years old! He had a small family party on Sunday, but he enjoyed it very much. We missed my sister, brother-in-law, and niece, who were home with the stomach flu, and my dad, who was working. But it was exactly what Caleb needed – to be surrounded by people who love him.

This week, we finished our History book. I have ordered the audio version of it. The boys really loved listening to the storytelling style, even if Caleb had trouble sitting still through it. Jimmy is anxious to find out how some of those names & places are really pronounced – Mommy admitted often to not having a clue there. lol It was good to show them that I am not perfect, especially since Jimmy struggles with how to handle his own failures.

We skipped school on Friday again. More errands to prepare for yet another snow event. I’m done with snow.

Snow Days

We had 3 days of school this week. Errands (to prepare for being snowed in) and fun (playing in the snow) squeezed our schedule a bit. I’m happy about it – I can be a little too focused on checking things off the list instead of enjoying life. Randy was in Ireland on business this week, so it was nice to have some down time in our usual routine.

Our big school news is something I found at Wal-Mart. It is a nifty journal, one of those black-and-white composition books. The top of each page is blank for artwork & the bottom is kindergarten lined (line, dotted line, line) for younger writers. Caleb enjoyed dictating his stories (I wrote them down) & drawing them. Jimmy struggled to find ideas to write about. I found a list of first grade writing prompts to help with his mini writer’s block. Much better! I am loving their creativity. The rule for Jimmy is that he is not allowed to ask how to spell something. This is as much for making this a spelling evaluation as it is for allowing him the freedom to create stories without worrying about the spelling.

Green Eggs & Ham

Last week, which I forgot to mention, Jimmy finished the book he was reading aloud. It was a level 2, but it was loooong. He would have gladly read a shorter book all in one sitting, but a looooong book apparently needed to be broken into 2 page chunks. Sigh. I am happy, though, with our experience reading it. The book was about the history of the American flag. Jimmy had to read some difficult words in this book, such as Philadelphia, Revolution, British, colonists, and soldiers. There were a lot of tears but also a lot of opportunities to explain that it sometimes takes work to get things right. Jimmy is a perfectionist & doesn’t like when he doesn’t get something correct immediately.

As a reward for finishing the looooong book, I let Tuesday’s reading session slide; he had a poem to read in math that I allowed to count as his reading assignment. On Thursday, I selected his next book – Green Eggs & Ham. After the looooong book experience, I expected Green Eggs & Ham to last us several lessons.

He read it all in one sitting.

Let me say that again. He read it all in one sitting. And he only made one mistake, which he caught before I had a chance to say anything! He was so proud of himself!

So now here is the question: do I push him to read the harder books, helping him to understand that he needs to put in effort sometimes to get something correct? Or do I allow him to read the easier books in hope of fostering a love of reading? I know the real answer is a balance of both. I hate the balancing act!

Biology

The big news this week – we started Biology! Last year, I found a wonderful science curriculum for younger kids. We started with Chemistry over the summer, and I bought Biology with the intent on using it for summer lessons in 2010. Because of the unplanned break we had to take in order to get the house on the market, we ended up not having any summer lessons. I decided to incorporate it into our regular school year instead. Our main curriculum (Five in a Row) only has 15 books in volume 3, which is what we will be using this year, so there was room to add in Biology & History. (I’ve already mentioned History in my previous blog posts, but as a recap, I had also intended that to be a summer 2010 lesson.)

Our Bio lessons this week were a lot of fun. Caleb enjoyed looking at the colorful pictures in the textbook while Jimmy remembered some of the picture styles from our Chemistry text. They both enjoyed the experiment (we had to “classify” a group of household objects in several different ways).

In looking through Jimmy’s math materials, I found a discrepancy between the teacher’s manual & the workbook. Somewhere (I can’t remember where), I read that Jimmy would be writing the date on his workbooks starting somewhere in the middle of the school year. I flipped ahead in his workbook & found where he’ll be using M/D/YYYY format, but there were no spaces in previous worksheets for the standard date format (i.e. Jan 8, 2011). Starting on Tuesday, I instructed Jimmy to write the date (standard format) on his worksheet after his name. He caught on right away! I feel a little like a rebel. LOL