The house isn't as clean and organized as I'd hoped to have it before we started. I found my history schedule! but don't have math and reading scheduled. It's not perfect, but it's what I have. And it worked out pretty well for today. I knew I couldn't change the date I had set to start becuase then I could keep putting it off and before I knew it December would have been here and we still hadn't started full days. So I stuck to my original start date and we had a great time.
We started at 9:30am, which is what I want to do every school day. We prayed, worked on remembering John 3:16, and then worked with the calender for a few minutes. I gave Builder Boy index cards labeled "10 Minutes Handwriting," "Reading Lesson," "Grammar Lesson," and "Math Lesson" and let him pick which he wanted to do first. All language arts and math lessons were review, and the reading and math lessons were a bit shorter than we will be doing on a regular school day, but I want the first week or two to be a bit easy to get them used to doing school on a schedule. I addressed the lessons mostly to Builder Boy. Early Bird sat at the table and drew on his new personal white board most of the time. He tried to do what we were doing in math, but I hadn't worked with quantities with him yet, so he mostly was playing. I will work with him individually on quantities. Early Bird also participated in the reading review, often saying the word quicker than Builder Boy.
After a ten minute break I read to them about the first nomads from Story of the World: Ancient Times. Early Bird sat in my lap and maybe listened. Builder Boy liked repeating (on his own) some of what I read, and asked questions and added information that he already know (he listed all the vegetables and fruits he could think of when we read about foraging.) He did a wonderful job answering the review questions! His narration was: "The girl did not eat the grain but hunters went out to get meat and the kids went out to get the vegetables and fruit." I showed them pictures of cave paintings in the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. Then we went outside and made our own cave paintings!
I debated with myself between home-made paints in authentic colors, (dark red, brown, black) and the primary finger paints from the dollar store. I decided to go with the washable finger paints, and I'm really glad I did. |
| Early Bird and Mama's Paintings |
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| Builder Boy's Landscape |
How FUN! We may have to try our hands at 'cave' painting next week - I'll have to see if I can find washable fingerpaints, though - I think all I have are the ridiculously expensive Crayola ones (green and blue only) leftover from another project... Hooray for a fantastic start to the year!
ReplyDeleteI found a recipe for homemade fingerprints that I want to try out, but I'm pretty sure it's not washable. I was thinking about using it for this and making dark, "natural" looking colors, but I didn't have the time, I'm out of food coloring, and I was afraid of it not being washable. But I am going to try it soon, just to see how it turns out. Here's the recipe:
ReplyDeleteFingerpaint - In a small saucepan, mix together 1/4 cup cornflour and 2 cups of water. Add food coloring to get to desired color. Boil until mixture thickens, then allow to cool. Pour into lidded containers to store.