Labor Day

Happy Labor Day!
We did not take a day off from school today. Skittles asked me why he had to do school work when other kids are not in school. I told him that I save up our days off so that we can take them off towards the end of the year when we are really sick of doing school work. I was really looking forward to school today. This is the first time in a long time that I can say that. We are enjoying Queens so much!

• In Language Lessons both boys had to narrate about the poem that they read and copied over the past 2 weeks. Queens has questions to help prompt the children. I let Twizzler do his narration orally. Skittles wrote his out. I had to send him back to do it a second time because he had simply answered the questions and not written things out neatly in complete sentences. This is a grammar lesson after all. 
• In math, Twizzler learned about division. I have a drawer full of math manipulatives that I have accumulated over time. Today he chose to use the links to help him visualize the math problems. I love Teaching Textbooks but it helps to have a lot of different kinds of manipulatives around to make the concept more concrete. 
• Hershey colored a dog brown and traced a letter D with my help. 
• In history we learned a little more about ancient Egypt. Then the boys wrote their names using hieroglyphics. I was surprised that writing in picture form seemed to be easier than writing in cuneiform was last week. 
• I introduced the kids spelling words this week. There are a few of Skittles words that he has never heard before. I think I am going to have him look them up in the dictionary this week and find the definition. I told Twizzler that his words this week all show that when a vowel comes before 2 consonants, it makes the short vowel sound. I then put the word 'ball' on the board. I asked him to tell me which letters where the vowels and which were the consonants. I was surprised to learn that he had no idea what I was talking about. It made me thankful that I switched programs. I am not sure if we never covered consonants and vowels with our former curriculum or if it just got lost in the overwhelming amount of information that was being taught each day. So we had a brief lesson on vowels and consonants then I asked him to point them out in each of his new words. 
• In science the boys read the next chapter in their science book and then did some research about how squirrels prepare for winter. I let Twizzler tell me his answers verbally while I wrote them down. Again Skittles tried to get away with only a quick short answer. I pulled out one of my old tricks. I had him orally retell me what he had read from his research. I wrote on the board several key words from his oral narration and then I had him write it down again. The second time he was able to write a much more detailed answer because he had those key words in front of him to serve as a reminder and to assist with spelling the big words like "hibernation."