we actually did quite a lot today.
it went pretty well, although for some reason…despite having things to do, the kids continue to bicker like crazy and are driving ME crazy with it! sigh now i understand why mom would sometimes knock my brother and my heads together to get us to stop fighting. LOL! (no, i won’t ever do that, but i UNDERSTAND it now!)
ok, so what we accomplished:
we completed one entire math lesson (not really a huge feat, they are short…but considering tyren was interrupting us, that’s something to be proud of, i think.) i still have 2 more to do to catch up for today (since we didn’t get the lessons from yesterday done). i may do it when daddy gets home and can entertain the little guy.
maeven seems to have a handle on the math concepts that i’m working on with her so far, as well she should since they are pretty simple for her age, but it does make me feel good to notice this. i wanted to make sure to cover these easy lessons (i do rush through some of them that are obviously too easy for her) because i want to make sure that she’s got the basics…and also this math program we are using is very different than traditional math, so i don’t want to miss any unique concepts. right start math is what we are using…it is based on montessori math. Here is an excellent explanation of the program. its what turned me on to it and its uniqueness. its a visual way of doing math and i think its just SOOOO cool! one of the interesting things is that they don’t even introduce subtraction until the children have mastered addition. also it uses an abacus. way cool! not a traditional asian one, though, its one that they created but still cool.
so so far we’ve gotten one lesson of math done today…we also did some science… i’ve decided that we are working on birds right now (i haven’t sorted through exactly what schedule i want to cover what science topics yet, so i thought we’d just start with birds which she’s already very interested in and we’d just go from there) so i got some books from the library on the subject and only one came in so far. here it is:
so i came up with the idea to learn a little about beaks before reading the book so i threw together a game i learned at SCICON, years ago, about bird beak adaptations. (crazy that i was able to just pull that out of my head! was a very proud moment!)
so i pulled out some beaks:
tweezers, tongs, chopsticks, popsicle sticks, spoons, tea strainer
and some food for the birds:
many different sizes/shapes of beans, corn flakes, pasta noodles, plastic tile squares
and i had the kids have a fun time practicing being birds and trying out the different beaks with the different foods and see what worked better for what foods, etc.
quite an educational experience, if i do say so myself! 🙂 and they had a blast! both of them!
another thing we did today was we watched this dvd:
(Signing Time Vol 8, The Great Outdoors)
for the 2nd time. (actually we had seen it months ago as well, but just checked it out of the library again last week). yesterday we had watched it and sat and really went through every sign with the kids on the dvd. this time, we sat and wrote down the words each on its own index card (maeven helped me at first, but pooped out fast and was more enjoying just signing). we also took it as a chance to practice the signs. then after the dvd ended, we went in the other room and played a game we made up ourselves (maeven and i together!)
we turned over a card at a time and whoever was able to sign the word first got to keep the card. so we had a little practice both reading AND signing. tyren even joined in…although he doesn’t know the signs as well, so he ended up being our card turner. and our “good job!” person (telling us good job when we got it right). very cute! 🙂
pretty fun! so i’m planning on continuing on like this…there’s so stinkin many of those signing time dvds and i know we can learn a buttload just from them…plus they are fun to watch and now we have a fun game to play. so i’m going to try to just keep adding to this and see how much we can build our sign language repertoire. i have been wanting to expand this for myself for some time…and the kids seem to love it too. tyren has really been getting a kick out of sign language lately. fun to see. and really helpful if we can teach him some of the words he still slurs. he is an excellent speaker but there are still a good amount of words that it takes us awhile to figure out what he’s saying. sign language will definitely help with this.
another thing we worked on today was a “famine project” that i got out of our history book (SOTW). we are still working on biblical times in our lessons (not real happy with how the author keeps treating the biblical stories as historical fact, but i am not interested in cutting out these very famous bible stories either…i have no problem with my kids learning about moses and such because it is relevant in a christian society, where most of the people around them base their lives around these stories, including their own relatives. i just wish they didn’t treat the stories as historical fact. so i make sure we discuss this and that maeven understands that some people believe in these stories and some don’t.
anyway, so we had a project about famine…since we just learned about moses and the israelites and such…so we went outside and got some potting soil for our yogurt cups:
then we brought them inside and planted beans in them:
then marked maeven’s “W” for water and tyren’s “F” for famine. we will be watering maeven’s generously on a regular basis, and tyren’s only a little once a week. in a few weeks we’ll see what they look like. should be interesting.
