15 January 2008

school day

while eli naps and the girls play with colorforms, i thought i'd drop a little note telling you of our day. i wish to GOD that i had a camera, because these girls are so DARLING! i mean, seriously now!

the day started with our "circle" if you can call it that. eli knows the start of a school day means we sit together in the living room and sing...twinkle, twinkle little star (eli and ida's favorite) and today stella added her twist from her violin group class. a kind-of pre-solfege thing...sing and touch head to toe (or toe to head, actually):

toes toes (twinkle) head head (twinkle) air air (little) head (star)
shoulder shoulder (how i) waist waist (wonder) knees knees (what you) toes (are)

i think you can figure the rest. absolutely hilarious and fun for some reason.

next we had our "lesson" which i though was going to be a bit too tricky...and i DID underestimate these kiddos! i decided to talk about vowels and how they are a special family of letters that we need to spell all words. so i wrote them out
Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu
we made all the sounds...more fun...
then we wrote them in our books...
then we wrote our "spelling words" i thought...yeah right! they totally read each word with no problem!!!
Cat
Pen
Sit
Hot
Fun
they wrote each word five times in their books. loved it, too!
then i wrote the words out again on a paper with their names and they had to circle the vowels...perfect!
onto lunch...quickly scarfed down so we could go outside for a walk. it is freezing cold (not as cold as seattle!) bu cold enough for flurries. we walked the block and then hit their favorite backyard tree to build another beaver dam. after an hour of this (yeah, i know! i was freezing!) we went in for hot chocolate. eli crashed and now colorforms. we might read some stories before the end of our day...but all in all...a fun and educational day. for all of us!

5 comments:

bandwidow said...

Oh Melis! I am so interested in your homeschool quest! Chris mentioned it back in August and I didn't know you were in the throws of it! I am wanting to do this with El, but sometimes freak myself out! You're teaching another little girl as well? Did you do any traditional preschool, tell, tell, tell!

rachel said...

oh what fun!

RachelMM said...

So cool Mel! Wish I could be with you. Love, Rachel

Jennifer said...

yikes! homeschooling is not for the faint at heart! i'd rather teach other kids than my own...i've so much more patience with other peoples kids than with my own...
you're an amazing woman.

Anonymous said...

Hi Sis...well, first of all I miss you, we haven't spoken except for your advise on slings & breast pumps. But secondly, since your birthday is coming soon, I think you need to be sure your Amazon wish list is up to date on the books you want & maybe you should even add a camera that interests you to the list.
Might be helpful for, oh, I don't know...your Mom or sister :)
Love you!