One thing I did this long weekend was get some 1/2 inch magnetic tape from Michael's. Then, I printed out all possible activities (using either a 20 or 22 point font) that we might do in a school day. This includes all our Brain Therapy exercises, plus Dance, Awana Verses, Pledge, Recess, Lunch, Seatwork, and all our ECC subjects. I itemized out Handwriting, Copy Memory Verse, Dictation, Writing Strands, and Vocabulary, rather than having the generic "Language Arts" category. I cut out the subjects and exercises and put them on the magnetic tape. I placed the magnetic strips in order down the white board so Rabbit can see what we're doing each day. Then, when we finish an exercise or subject, she gets to move the magnet to the bottom of the white board and see what the next topic is we will do.
One of the activities for Geography today was to make a map of the yard and hide a treasure. So, I made a bag of pretzels and dairy-free chocolate chips and hid them in a bush/tree in our back yard. I had a map with a star for where it was hidden. I didn't put the treasure out until this morning, and I put it in a bush that had pretty wimpy branches. Well, Rabbit finally recognized the map as a map of the backyard and went hunting for her treasure. She found it, but the squirrels had already gotten into the bag - at least half the pretzels and chocolate chips were missing. Lesson learned: don't use food as a treasure for this activity if you have wildlife in your neighborhood! A trip to the dollar store would be better.
I remade the treasure and let her eat it for her morning snack while we did Power Glide Spanish.
Having Rabbit take care of the magnets worked great, and kept us doing the next thing. During math, while I was putting the boys down for quiet time, she did her math page by herself, without me sitting next to her! She did make some mistakes - like number reversals. She was doing column adding (she set the word problem up correctly), and the first column totaled 20. But, she wrote the 2 and carried the "0". I had to remind her we write the units (or ones) and carry the tens. She hasn't made that mistake in a while. She did the same on one of the other problems. The units column added up to 12, but she wrote the 1 and carried the 2. But, I told her how proud I was of her sitting down and working by herself on it, and staying on task with it.
During reading, the story was about a boy named Noah, and his superior attitude toward his younger siblings. When we finished reading today's selection, Rabbit said, "I really don't like that Noah boy." We talked about why. Finally, I said, "What does he have in his heart that is making him act like this?" Rabbit said, "Oh! Pride." Then we talked about how God doesn't like the proud. We had memorized a Proverb's verse last year about that. I was glad we could tie God into the end of the day as well as the beginning of the day, too.
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