Talk about starting your day with a hiccup! The original plan was for Caleb to have a class at our local zoo in the morning, which he has them several times a year. Unfortunately, Xander had come down with a solid cold this weekend and since we are going on a mini-vacation starting tomorrow I thought it best for all of us to stay home, so he could rest up. To say Caleb handles change well is a huge understatement. We went through ALLOT of attitude and flighty attention spans today. I know I did not get my best work out of him but hey we tried.
Once Caleb settled down with the idea of not going to the zoo and remembering we will be swimming in a warm waterpark for the next three days, he was able to get started on a full school day. Every morning I make a list for him of the subjects we are to get through that day but than it is up to him to decide which order we do them. He likes to start with Math every morning. We are just finishing up triple digit multiplying and started talking about factoring. Science lesson brought Caleb back into a happier mood. He needed to come up with a mnemonic phrase to help remember the classification order of animals.
Personally, I thought it was pretty clever but yes I am biased =) Besides working on memorizing the different classifications, he also began reading on drag and lift for flying animals. He has been reading a lot in science lately so it will be nice in the next few days to start getting into some experiments and projects. Caleb choose to do English next which he has actually been enjoying lately. (Please hold back your gasp, I know that I have to) He began reading the Farmers Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilders today and there was a section that was talking about a mean girl who was being bossy. Caleb stopped and said, “wow! Girls have not changed much since than!” He apparently has some bossy girls in his Truth Trackers class at church. The comment still made me laugh.
Caleb is also learning about poems in English right now, specifically “America” by Samuel Smith. Today we talked about what a rhyme sequence is and he had to start creating his own poem following the same rhyme sequence that is in “America”. As you can tell from the photo, he is thinking really hard about it. Writing class was a tad disappointing for me. The instructions were to look at a photo and use details from it to write a paragraph. Caleb’s paragraph used no adjectives except for two, little, and big. GRRRRR!!! Come on Caleb!! Yes, I needed to step away for a moment to regather my cool before moving ahead with him. His 15 minute reading time was just as exasperating because he spent more time worrying about what Xander was doing and yelling at him for getting too close to particular trucks that he planed on playing with after school. I wish I could say things improved with History but it didn’t. We are talking about creation and he is making a book that has the bible verse explaining what God created each day. His task was to write down each bible verse that explains what God had done each day. Because I “forced” him to find them on his own, he was only able to get through 2 days. Gym class, however, shook him back up in a good way and he was able to act goofy. Xander even jumped in on some of the activities. The best part was when they were acting like seals and had to crawl across the floor only using their arms. Sure sliding on the hard wood floor was easy enough but that area rug was a completely different story. Everyone got a much needed laugh from it.
As I mentioned before, Xander had come down with a cold but he still insisted on doing school today. We reviewed the letter O, squares, and the number 4. He is now consistently saying 4 different types of colors: blue, purple, white, and brown. Today his copying of the word Monday looked really good and cutting is still a skill we are really working on. He is now to the point of holding his own paper and making a single cut around the entire page. Besides doing an O Letter Hunt and gluing octopuses to a page on his own, he got to make a Name Train and paint it. He didn’t really spend too much time painting like he usually does but focused on his letter pop-cycles for awhile.
Little Wes was a busy boy as usual playing with Thomas the Train and the marble run in the living room. During school time, he jumped in on the Name Train (haha that was a really bad joke) and painting but also enjoyed his puzzles, practicing writing, and his pattern blocks. Most days with the pattern blocks, he tries to match the shapes to the cards but today he pretended they were all airplanes and made noises while they flew through the air. ADORABLE I know!! =)
Even though our day did not start out the best and I wish I could have gotten a bit more effort from Caleb in a few areas. Overall, I feel like it was a very productive day and we all survived!! =) On to many more Happy Learning Days!
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