What We're Up To

Life is a little more hectic in the first grade than in previous years. I find myself with not as much to say or time to say it in. Here are some of the learning activities we've been doing:

Budgeting - using the Kid's Wealth Program.

Crafts - including painted and decorated wall letters and Christmas ornaments.

Math - for some reason he likes flash cards right now, so in addition to "living math" he is up to the 8's in addition and 7's in subtraction.

Art and Music Appreciation - saw The Nutcracker for the first time, as well as attended the lower and upper school Christmas Cantata which is a Lessons and Carols format

Compassion - shopped for two Christmas children and worked at the "toy store" for one charity's gift distribution.

Chores - cleaning, folding and putting away clothes, setting the table, helping in the kitchen.

Reading - began team-reading (I read one page, he reads the next, etc.) his first real chapter book, even if it is "twaddle".

Literature - read a wide variety of Christmas tales and poetry (Christian and secular) every day from Thanksgiving until December 26. I didn't keep an exact list of these, but I worked from another blog's list that I had cut and pasted a couple of years ago to my own Word Document, so I can probably re-create a list and may do that in a subsequent post.

Samuel's First Story

Totally out of the blue. A big secret. Samuel found a small empty notebook and decided on his own to write a story. Occasionally he asked me how to spell a word. Usually I would encourage him to use his phonics and see if he could figure it out first. Here is the finished product (I left in his spelling and grammar):

The place

ther was a 6 year old. he was A nice boy. Who Loved books! (a note at the bottom of the page to "Go on")

one of his books The Gengerbread man. another of his Books Was the place. The place It was his faveret book ever!

Onece he jumped into the Book. there Was candy. there was dinosaurs. even rainbows every day. But he got tired of eating candy he got a bellyache. he desidced he wanted to go back home. so he jumped Out of the book And went to bed

The End

Spelling and grammar aside, I was impressed with the fact that his story had a clear beginning, middle and end. Now that I know he is interested in writing stories, I think I will encourage it just a bit :-)

Swine Flu, Anniversaries, Afterschool, Vacations, and Birthdays

I just realized it had been a few weeks since I had posted, but since I don't have a post idea in mind, I'm just going to ramble about some stuff:

Swine Flu
There have been a lot of absences in Samuel's school, making me slightly paranoid. Not that the swine flu is much worse than regular flu, unless you have something else wrong with you. I'm paranoid just the same.

Anniversaries
My mother-in-law passed away almost a year ago. My husband doesn't talk about her at all. He didn't want to go visit her grave on Memorial Day or Mother's Day or her birthday. I'm worried he's bottling in his feelings.

Afterschool Efforts
Not going as well this year as last year. We still read at bedtime and look for educational opportunities at other times. Our two "spines", so to speak, "The Burgess Animal Book" and "The Story of the World". We don't read from these every night, but usually at least once a week. We have one novel from my "list" going at all times. I throw in poetry, living math books, living science books, artist and composer study periodically, but not regularly. There's a lot more homework this year, and less time with Dad (due to work and school schedules overlapping), so the time we have for this is significantly less. I also want to give him lots of free creative play time. I just think that's what he needs right now. So I'm happy with what we're doing, it's not what I planned.

Family Vacations
Four years ago this Christmas, my dad had a great year business-wise and gave all of us an extended family cruise. We all had such a great time together and we kept saying we're going to do it again soon. Well, it looks like "soon" might be next year (although it's not a gift this time, just all of us going to the same place). We've talked about another cruise or maybe renting a beach house. I'm hoping for someplace we can drive to.

Birthdays
I turned 41 on Sunday. Although other birthdays have had special significance for me, this one was just a number. I had a great day though. Samuel and Chris let me sleep in and fixed me cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Samuel gave me my fourth pair of annual Halloween birthday socks (after the first pair, I told Chris I didn't want any more Halloween socks or jewelry, which I have also gotten; he thinks it's funny to let Samuel get me a pair every year...now I love it)! Then he made me a sweet little bracelet of orange yarn and rainbow-colored shiny beads. We went for "Sunday Supper" at my parents house with my sibs. I just love spending time with my family!

There once was a...

Limerick!

Recently while surfing through our channel guide on PBS, I discovered something wonderful...The Electric Company is back on TV! It's actually an updated version and after watching the first episode we could DVR, I think it may even be better. It has some of the old favorite bits like the shadow people sounding out words. That doesn't really describe this, but if you are a fan, you should know what I'm saying, and if you aren't a fan, then just trust me :-)

But it's got some real characters with a short story running through it and phonics rules set to rap music. One of the favorites we've seen a few times now is the "Bossy R".

Anyway, back to my post title. The very first episode we watched had one of the characters accepting a dare to enter a limerick battle, but she didn't know what one was. Samuel loved the sing song rhythm so of course, I had to check out a couple books of limericks from the library. The first one is "There Once Was a Very Odd School" by Stephen Krensky with poems all about being in school. We are now ready for the second book titled "The Hopeful Trout and Other Limericks" by John Ciardi. We've also tried our hand at composing a couple of limericks together. We're not that great at it. I'm not ready to post one of our joint efforts yet.

Another Fun Living Math Book

This fun living math book was too advanced for Samuel, but this one does offer a lot that he can do without my help and some that he can understand with my help.

Zookeeper for a Day plays into Samuel's love of animals as well as his love of math. The premise is that the child gets to walk in the steps of a zookeeper for a day and see how they use math in their jobs. Some is mental math and some needs a pencil, paper, and sometimes ruler. It's part of a Math Adventures series so I will have to see if we can find additional books.

So that's my share of the day! Hope you find it useful.

Homeschooling Dreams

There's a lot less time for homeschooling in first grade. I love Samuel's school, but I still hold on to that illusion that I am a homeschooler. He's in class 3 days a week, plus chess club and Awana. On Thursdays, he gets enough homework for Friday and Monday, but it's the school's homework, not mine.

I love his school. If I were a full time homeschooler, my curriculum would be very similar to their's. I still view myself as a homeschooler. I can't help it. I still faithfully read homeschool blogs and Yahoo groups. When will I give up my delusion?

I still have a booklist I put together for bedtime reading. This is fluid and other "fun" books get slipped in there. For instance, right now, we are reading the Burgess Animal Book, Story of the World, The Jungle Book (Kipling, not Disney), one of the A to Z Mystery series (Ron Roy), The Mouse and the Motorcycle (Cleary), and The Van Gogh Cafe (Cynthia Rylant - we love this). We don't read from each book every night. I let him choose which books, but not the same one two nights in a row, except for the A to Z Mystery which has very short chapters.

Also, periodically we will bring home another cool non-chapter book from the library (like a living math book or biography from Mike Venezia) or we read an old favorite in our home library. He also reads to me probably 4 nights a week.

So, I'm homeschooling, right? I'm homeschooling, but I'm not.

Fun Living Math Book

I'm not sure if this find was discovered because I saw it on someone's blog (if so, let me know and I'll give you credit and a link) or if I did some weird search on my library's web site, but this book came in for us and I LOVE it! The math is a little too much for my first grader, but I could see him being able to do some of the problems over the next few years.

The book is called Arithme-tickle by J. Patrick Lewis. There are 19 rhyming riddles that ask you to solve a problem. Here is and example using on of the short (and one of the easiest) riddles:

Dr. Nast said, :I'll give you three shots
to get rid of those hideous spots.
One shot every half hour." Goodness sake!
How long did those nasty Nast shots take?

The answer key is at the bottom of each page, but you need a mirror to read it!

When I see something cool, I like to share it, mostly because I [steal] get so many good ideas from reading other blogs. It's my "pay it forward".