Better than nothing, yes? The picture above is from our newly implemented "teatime," an idea gleaned from the Bravewriter website. The idea is that you set the table all fancy like and sit down and have tea and read poetry and other stuff aloud. Only my kids are drinking hot chocolate because they don't like tea. And see those cookies? While I was making the cookies, I noticed that the shortening looked a little funny. And smelled a wee bit funny, too. Usually I use butter, but we didn't have enough. So I made the cookies anyway, then looked up what was going on with my shortening, and did you know that shortening gets rancid? I had no idea. The cookies were fine, though. I think the shortening was only at the beginning stages of rancidity. Who wants to come over for cookies?! Really, everything I read said the cookies might taste funny but would not make anyone sick or dead, so I figured since they didn't taste funny, we were good to go. And about 20 seconds after this picture was taken, Milo dropped his fancy teacup on the floor and spilled hot chocolate everywhere. Despite all of this, though, the kids are super into tea time. This one was last Friday and we also did it Friday before last, and Milo asked when we were going to do it again at least 3 times during the week. I gave them a book of poetry to look through and each pick a poem from for us to read; this week the book was The Earth is Painted Green : A Garden of Poems about our Planet, which, incidentally, I like a lot and which one can buy used on Amazon for a penny.
We read a few poems from the book, then the kids illustrated one of the poems while I read a chapter from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
History: Chugging along in Story of the World. Even Milo is listening in most of the time, which I'm a bit surprised about. Ari would never have sat still for it at that age. We've implemented a "narration jar" that is actually a narration box. It is a perpetual challenge to get Ari to talk about anything he reads because there is not a single right answer, and the boy does not like it when there is not a single right answer (and one he knows absolutely at that). So the narration box gives him a bunch of options for how to talk or write about what he's read, like "draw a picture" or "write three things about what we read" or "put on a play about it." There is also, "write a letter to Nana," and that's what he drew this week. Hmm...this is going to be huge, but here's the letter to Nana. As you can see, only the first part has anything to do with the reading. Then he talks about other stuff we did this week. The whole letter is six pages long, but mostly consists of a bunch of mazes and puzzles for Nana to solve. I'm not sure what all is in it, because I'm only really supposed to read the first page. So everything else I know is what I happened to glimpse when I was scanning the first page. My favorite part is: "Warning: Don't turn the page if you don't like farm animals." I like farm animals! But I'm not allowed to read the rest anyway.
Math: I have this big plan where we do all kinds of superfun math games on Fridays, but then there is Gus. But I did just buy this book:
for Ari. It introduces a concept with a little story and then has 4 different levels of problems (mostly word problems) dealing with the concept. We've only done the first chapter, but so far so good. I think I need to find something fun for memorizing multiplication tables. He's at the point where he has to stop and multiply in his head for a lot of stuff that he wants to do, and it really slows him down. I'm thinking of the Schoolhouse Rock: Multiplication Rock video. I should check United Streaming and see if they have anything, too. Milo is zooming along in his Singapore Earlybird. He just started the 3rd book (out of 4).
Phonics: Speaking of Milo, he's already grown tired of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which seemed so promising at first. Oh well. Guess it's break time again.
Co-op: I'm teaching Ari's group again on Tuesday. I guess I'm going to talk about Marco Polo and compasses. I don't know anything much about Marco Polo. But I'm going to have them all make compasses with corks and needles and then we'll go outside and do an exciting compass activity (with a regular compass, not the cork ones) that, if I remember right, has to do with finding a coin in the grass. Co-op days leave my utterly exhausted--mostly because of art. Teresa, who is the boss of all of us (and officially the boss of art), has the kids do incredibly elaborate projects every week. Which would be really cool if my kids were 4 or 5 years older than they are. But as it is, it means Ari and Milo both need extensive help with the projects, while Gus clings to me and sobs (because art happens, conveniently, at his usual naptime).
Spanish: Spanish is, sadly, already almost over. The homeschool center that jacked their prices up so much this is fall is now abruptly closing, leaving our Spanish tutor (who also taught classes there) in a financial bind. So she's not going to be able to come to my house anymore for lessons. She's hoping to get enough kids together to start teaching classes at her house, which would be lovely. If she can't do that, she has to go back to work full time. I hope we can keep doing classes with her; the kid adore her. Ari won't shut up when she's around, which is unheard of for him. Ari especially is very into Spanish; I really want to keep it up, so if we lose Maestra Lily I guess we'll have to scramble to find someone else.
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