We didn't really get started until 10:00 this morning. The kids got up at 7:30, and then breakfast, brushing teeth, morning chore, bike ride and snack took until 10. I'm probably going to have to figure out a way to speed that up. I hate to drop the bike ride, because the exercise is good for the kids. Getting the kids up earlier isn't an option because they often need a little supervision while getting dressed, and I'm usually not ready until 7:30 myself. But, we'll figure that out eventually.
Now, over the summer we've been reading some of the "Millers" books. Right now we're on Prudence and the Millers. The kids are loving these, and always asking for more. So, we started our school time with reading the next chapter out of that. Then we started the Bible time from My Father's World 1st Grade. Today was a discussion on the importance of the Bible, and how in the olden days they wrote on scrolls. My husband had got dowels this weekend and cut and sanded them down. I took a long sheet of paper (made by cutting packing paper in half) and made a sample for them to see what one would look like. We had a fun little discussion about that.
Next was reading time. I worked with Tigger first, while Pooh did some dot-to-dot pages and colored them. Everything went fine with Tigger, and the blend practice was a good review. I decided to save the Student Page for later since he just did so much writing. Pooh and Tigger switched (and Tigger was very excited to use his new markers and crayons on the dot-to-dot pages). Pooh did fine with everything up to the blending. But, we just kept going at it until it became easier for him. He kept saying /d/ for the "b", even though we didn't do "d" today.
After that, I decided to do Calendar time and the Weather Chart all together. I had found an old job chart from the Dollar Store that I never used, turned it sideways and now I have a chart to go with our weather dial. We reviewed the months of the year and days of the week. Then, one at a time I asked for a month before and a month after, chosing a different month for each one. Did the same for the days of the week. Then we went over how to read a calendar, and what the day before and after today is. Finally we practiced saying our phone number and address, and it was 11:30 - time for me to go make lunch and the kids to go out into the backyard to play.
Thinking about how doing Calendar time and the Weather Chart together went, I decided to do the rest of the Daily Math Activities separately. This was good, because it took a while for Tigger to understand filling in the number of the day page. We never covered subtraction in K (never got to that lesson in the Math-U-See Primer book), so I had to cover that. And, he had trouble with the "what number plus 1 equals 1" equation. But, I kept showing him with beans until he finally got it. While Tigger and I had been doing this, Pooh was playing with the Pattern Blocks. So, then we switched. Pooh breezed through the rest of the Daily Math Activities, but I can see he's going to have trouble with the Calendar stuff. So, I think I'm going to have to keep working with them separately on this until I'm sure they both have it without relying on the other one. After I finished the math activities with Pooh, I got the Student Workbook out and worked on the blending again. He still had trouble with saying "ab" as /ad/, but as we persisted he got better at saying the right one.
Next I read Little Toot to them for the read aloud time. They enjoyed the book, and it was a good story about changing your character, working hard and not giving up.
Then I remembered I was going to do Spanish with them, so we listened to the first lesson together. I'm going to have to move our boom box out of the kitchen and into the living room so we can sit on the couch together and have them look over my shoulder at the book.
Finally, we did the first half of the scroll page - I had forgotten about it until this point. This is when the protests started. Pooh fussed because he was having trouble doing it super neat. Tigger complained because there was "one more thing to do." I did manage to keep my cool and walk them through it. We did it together, but I'm thinking that's not a good idea. They keep looking at each other's papers and comparing.
Overall, not a bad day. It took longer than I had hoped (we didn't finish until about 2:30). But, I had worked Rabbit in there too, getting her going on her Math and writing a letter to her pen pal and getting her going on her computer time. I've got 2 weeks to sort it out before we throw Rome to the Reformation into the mix.
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