We went to the Not-Back-to-School picnic yesterday. While a lot of people were there, there weren't as many as I thought would show up. It was still a lot of fun and the kids had a great time. Other than that, the 13yo decided to do MathPower and not the computer-based TLE, as did his sister, his sister and I talked about various subjects and expectations and I read her the "Smart Student Credo" from What Smart Students Know (I've already managed to bring in the first point--You are your best teacher--into our daily conversations!) and that was about it.
This morning, we got going a little slowly, but the 13yo did a very brief phonics review with spelling of one word (mistaken), read a chapter of Fantastic Mr. Fox with me (taking turns), wrote one sentence about it, spent about 15-20 minutes on math, listened to me share safety instructions for his science stuff and that was it. It's actually not bad for a first day of work for him! I want him to do at least that much tomorrow, ideally having him write a little more than just a sentence, have him start a grammar sheet, do his science write-up before we do the first 2 activities from his kit and get him started on geography. I want to make it a fun activity to start with: teach him how to use basic map coordinates and find out which continent it's in. He also sort of reading during silent reading time. One problem that has come up, though, is that he has declared that he already read the book he's reading and isn't interested in reading it anymore. I suspect that he hasn't read it all the way through as I knew more about what goes on in the book (the latest Harry Potter) than he did. But what do I do? I can't prove he hasn't read it and I don't want to set him up to lie. *sigh*
Dd spent a considerable amount of time reading (not unusual!) although spent considerable time before that copying into cursive a song from one of the Dragonslayer Academy books. Her cursive is absolutely wonderful! It's just not habit and natural so she still writes in print for other things. I guess I don't have a problem with that. I just think it's super important that she be able to write in cursive as well as be able to read it. Other than that, she did a geometry page in her math workbook, finished up a multiplication tables page and did about 30 minutes of typing.
Ds did a little bit of work with me first thing: we did a little review with the vowels (I even played a silly game where I asked him to tell me to point to the right letter and I would try to do it--with my eyes closed), he wrote the vowels and he did a few questions in his math book. He then spent a lot of time looking through National Geographics trying to find fish pictures for a notebook he's starting on animals. He didn't find any fish pictures with the NG's I gave him, but he found lots of other fascinating things.
The oldest got her first CALM assignment out of the way, read the safety instructions for her chem and sort of started reading the preparation unit, decided she'd read it for homework tonight as she was sleepy and not processing stuff, had a break and ate a snack, started her math, then we had lunch, she fell asleep during our silent reading time, slept for a good while, then resumed math and finished her first lesson. She ended up skipping French today, but I'm not too worried about her review for French. Just can't let it be a regular occurrence. I don't know if she had social studies planned today or not, but she didn't do it.
All-in-all, a fairly productive day!
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