A wee bit of catch-up

With the five of us being sick then well then sick then well ... school at times falls behind. I try to keep up on the 3Rs, but when either I am too sick or Bugsy is too sick, well, or Sugar is too sick, then we shelve it all until we recoup.

So far this week we've been extraordinarily productive, and I'm sure it has something to do with our upcoming trip West next week. I want to get on that plane completely caught up with school, with taxes done, and with a new storytime read aloud in hand. Nothing but stories, games, and field trips on our visit. I digress ...

I am so proud of Sugar's memory work ... she has learned all of the books of the Old Testament and we are now on Luke of the Gospels. She is really stretching herself as she recites them daily and I love to see those wheels turning.

Our first Bible story this week was about the Manna that God provided to the people of Israel who were in the desert with Moses. Sugar adores tissue paper. Seriously loves it. The itty bitty light colored pieces of tissue is the manna coming from the heavens (blue) to the desert sand (gold).

This is part of our dictation study ... first I read the Bible story from the TG, then Sugar reads a simplified version from her Bible reader, then she (with my help) summarizes the story into one or two sentences. At this point I dictate her summary and she writes it in her best hand paying attention to her spelling and punctuation.

For her Bible notebook I prefer to discuss her errors, but I have her leave her writing as is so that she and I can see her progress through the year. Here she misspelled "ground" but properly used an apostrophe and spelled "gathered" correctly. I hope that I am encouraging her to be attentive to her grammar while not allowing her to become so focused on it right now that she loses sight of the story and her creative illustrations (or she drums up sentence summaries that are too simple for the sake of being easy).


In phonics we began working on the past tense and adding "(e)d" to the end of words. We discussed how sometimes "ed" sounds like /ed/, sometimes like /t/, and sometimes like /d/. We also focused a good chunk of the morning to working on the pesky changer "e" and why/when he can change the vowel sounds and when he can't ... like in hop to hopped. MFW had a truly clever lesson on this.

Time for recess ... hey, when it doesn't break 30 degrees in March, we have to be creative. Spinning in capes is always a sure hit.

We had an amazing time today experimenting with watercolor pencils. They are such fun, but at the same time they offer tremendous room for growth and learning. Sugar was giddy to try them in her Bible notebook while Sparkler made a little picture of St Jude's orphanage and also tinkered with color blending on a little grid. 

Tomorrow Daddy is home and we are devoting the day to SCIENCE. We have four water activities to explore and ponder. Sam and Charlie need their crabitat cleaned, too (definitely a daddy job), and so a little reading and narrating of Pagoo is in order, as well. 

Because of Him.