A Return to Education

At long last, after a TWO week vacation, we have hit the books again. The children were very excited to have the opportunity to tackle some of the new items in the room. It was a little humorous for myself, as I wanted to use that motivation for my advantage in getting some of less glamourous tasks out of the way.

Grace and I got started first while Jack was still in major pretend play mode in the office with Dad. When she discovered that she would not be able to grab a new item off the shelf until she had practiced her memory verse and done her copywork work, she was deflated. After three words into her copywork, she began to feel dizzy and tired, and I had to smile as I recalled how two weeks ago they were begging for school work, and now I was dealing with a child who seemed a bit more "normal". After a few more reaffirmations that this is how it was going to be done, she quickly moved on and finished her copywork. Her reward, working with small tacks and a hammer to create this:

Grace smiling a little oddly because of her loose tooth.
The rest of her day went very smoothly. Her reading went very well, as this term, rather than focusing our reading on "I Can Read" books (which she does anyway on her own), it will be a little meater. Today's reading consisted of the first two poem selections from Walter de la Mare that AO has listed in their Year 2 area.

We are concentrating on geometry this term, specifically polyhedra and other 3D shapes, so today Grace decorated and cut out a template for a cube and we put it together. The fun part, however, was she was unable to guess what it would turn out to be as she colored it before cutting it out. She was surprised to see that it was going to be something 3D. Grace also began working on cutting out a number of different types of squirrels and squirrel tracks for us to begin putting together on a giant yellow board for our nature study.

Jack was happy to be back into the routine of things. He also was required to do some of his usual tasks first, but there was little complaint. He's weak in the area of the order of the days of the week and calendar months, so we'll be focusing on that, as well as progressing through his strong desire to read like his sister. Jack's favorite subject is Bible reading, and with two new children's Bibles (in addition to 4 others) he is loving the new fodder for this term. It is my sweetest time with Jack.


Lastly, in the late afternoon, we had our very first music lesson for guitar. Thankfully Daddy was around to help me out (who knows a fair amount of guitar) as I was actually a little nervous about teaching guitar. I will be learning with them as we go, and I feel very ill prepared in the area of music lessons. Grace was into the lesson, Jack was a little less patient with the idea.

I played our new Puccini CD for the children as they had some free time, and it went over very well. Tomorrow...Monet! :)