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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Friday, September 14, 2007

Thursday and today were much more productive...

Yesterday we worked on a plethora of school subjects - math, phonics, handwriting, geography and history. We started with the story of the wolf in sheep's clothing, then completed (and caught up on) our Meeting Books. After that, each kid did 2 pages of phonics, 2 pages of handwriting, and a page of math. Then, I read aloud from the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, about archeology and what history is. The kids both love the photos in those.

Both of them also got some practical, hands-on lessons yesterday. Fairy helped her Nonna make a batch of cookies, and Elf used a drill press (under M's guidance and very strict supervision) to make a screwdriver rack.

Today, we read about the boy who cried wolf, and then worked on our Meeting Books. We then moved on to math worksheets. Elf did a regular page and a drill page of doubles up to 5. Fairy worked on matching birthday cakes (for pictures of both, see Math Samples in my sidebar, under Sum & Substance). We worked on phonics next (again see sidebar). Today I combined the idea behind Easy Lessons for Teaching Word Families with Explode the Code. I wrote down the words from the first unit we've covered, gave Elf our letter cards, and had him sound them out when I read them out loud. He got all of them right, on the first try! I also used our alphabet flash cards for the first time, with Fairy. She can identify nearly all the letters and the sounds they make. After all that, we moved on to science, and we made a Jello cell model. It came out pretty good, although I think I could have used the bigger box of Jello. Still, we're now ready to move on to animals next week. I think the first section of the Animal Encyclopedia is on Arctic and Antarctic animals.

Tomorrow I have the day off, so we'll watch Walking with Cavemen as a segueway into the actual first chapter of SOTW. Yesterday, I read a little bit about cavemen to the kids, and they spent the early afternoon pretending to be Neanderthals. They hunted animals (teddy bears), made a tent of skins (towels and our table), and ate their kill (leftover chicken drumsticks).

4 comments:

  1. OK, I was totally thrown off by the real names. LOL I had to check to make sure I was reading the right blog. ;-) I knew about Cassia but not Cyrus.

    I loved the idea of your kid pretending to be Neanderthals, especially the whole eating their kill thing. OMG, that's FUNNY.

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  2. Uhm, yes, tis I again. I was checking out the samples, and, wow, that's sure some neat handwriting for the math pages. Way impressed with the kiddos.

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  3. Yeah, wow, that's some pretty impressive handwriting on the phonics work! You can tell there are artists in the family! ;)

    VERY cool cell too. I know I should be putting our science stuff in my Nuts & Bolts section too, but so much of it is oral that I feel that I'll just look like a slacker by immortalizing how little we actually do! LOL.

    I was a bit thrown by the names too, lol. I just caught "Cassia" out of the corner of my eye and thought, but we haven't seen them in almost a week! Why is she talking about my Cassia? LOL, egocentric of me, I suppose.

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  4. Anonymous6:20 PM

    Hi - not sure how to email you, but you are welcome to link to my blog. I'm flattered, LOL!

    I bet the kids had a wonderful time playing Neanderthal! It sounds like so much fun!

    Take care!

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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson

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