Gravity

When you lose control and you fall in a hole, it's Gravity. Or, it's when your four-year-old wants to play a game called ball storm and she dumps 100 balls over the side of the swingset. So, we discussed gravity, Sir Isaac Newton and that exhausted my trivial knowledge of gravity. But, I'm learning (slowly) to consciously integrate science, math and phonics into our day.

It was such a beautiful day here that we spent most of the morning outside. We took a snack, our picnic blanket and our library bookbag outside and ate and read and read and ate. We read a great book today called Twenty is Too Many by Kate Duke. The book starts out with 20 guinea pigs, then subtracts 10, then one from each until you get to one lonely guinea pig. It was a good way to start talking about taking away and adding to. Later we made some chocolate chip cookies and we talked more about how many cups, how many teaspoons, etc.

We're also continuing to work with letter sounds, particularly the short vowel sounds. According to A Well-Trained Mind, dd will be reading by the 11th lesson in Phonics Pathways. That's encouraging. Right now, she doesn't care to work with the blends, but we'll keep plugging away in fun, exciting homeschooling ways!

Under the Sea

We're back after a lengthy absence. Did you miss us? We were visiting the great state of West Virginia. We had a fantastic weekend and all of it was educational. Every single bit. Really. One of the highlights of the trip for me was watching dd catch a frog. I think I hid my feelings of repulsion fairly well. Luckily, she did not ask me to touch the frog. I had already steeled myself to do it without flinching or shrieking like the staunch amphibian hater that I am, but I'm so thankful I didn't have to!

Today was Princess game day. All day long-seemingly without cessation. First, we played Cinderella. I, of course, was the stepmother, the stepsisters, the prince and the duke. Whew! She even managed to kick off her glass slipper (aka mary jane) while running down the hall into her room. Later, she built a spinning wheel out of Lincoln Logs so that we could play Sleeping Beauty. All I had to do was move the princess' sleeping body over to the sofa cushion masquerading as an elegant bed. After Prince Teddy Bear woke her with a kiss, it was time to play Ariel. This consisted of my singing a few bars of Under the Sea over and over and over while Ariel ran and hid. While Ariel was hiding, I announced that I was going to look for King Triton (code for sneak a few minutes on the computer) but I was totally busted. "King Triton isn't in this story. We don't have enough Lincoln Logs to build him. Sing Under the Sea again." You may ask yourself why I agreed to do this. I'm asking myself as well.

We are slowly resuming a modified version of our earlier routine (do I sound like a politician or what?). On a friend's recommendation, I'm re-reading the relevant portion of A Well-Trained Mind. After skimming through again today, I can see that my initial plans were probably too ambitious for our first year. We're going to focus on letter sounds and numbers and we're going to read, read, read. I had hoped to have her reading by Christmas (and by reading I mean the Bob books, not War and Peace), but now I'm working on cultivating a more relaxed attitude. A more under the sea attitude. We'll see what tomorrow brings...

Back in the Saddle Again

So, today's lesson...definitely more organized and structured. However, it BOMBED. I was met with the classic: "When are we going to do something funner?" Not even grammatically correct! Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Of course, there's always the option that my brilliant daughter is bored because she truly does know the short vowel sounds now. I certainly do. I'm drilling them in my sleep. But I digress. So tomorrow, we start blending, folks. We'll be making actual, tw0-letter words. I'm sure she'll LOVE that.

The only part of today's lesson that didn't bomb was making cookies. We read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and then we made cookies. As she was attempting to pour the entire contents of our sugar canister into the bowl, I kindly pointed out to her that it wasn't time yet-not yet not yet not yet!!! To which she replied "Yes it is." Ordinarly, this is my cue to say "No it isn't," but today I took the higher road and said "I'm reading the directions. When you learn to read, then you'll know exactly when to put in the sugar." Yes, I did sound sanctimonious and snotty (mostly just snotty). Ugh.

Oh well, as Scarlett says, "tomorrow is another day."