Bike Ride, school, group science, dinner and another bike ride

Once again, we started our day with a bike ride to a park, a few minutes to play and then returned home to do schoolwork.  We are in a heat wave right now so everyone was really hot when we got back so it took a few extra minutes to cool down before we could get to work but they did it.

Skylar immediately wanted to get to work on her writing assignment (that I forgot to describe yesterday).  We are using Brave Writer, Jot it Down for her writing this year.  They give very specific assignments that take some time to work on.  The first one is retelling visually and orally some fairy tales.  Her first one is Rapunzel.  We didn't even have to read the book because she knows the story so well.  Yesterday, we talked about what she could do - put on a play.  Then we talked about the different people that would be needed - Rapunzel, the Prince and the Witch.  Finally, we discussed props.  So after our discussion we pulled together some items to create her puppets.  Yesterday, I had a lot of, "will you cut this out, I can't make a necklace will you make it, I don't know what to do."  I kept telling her over and over, "this is your project, I know you can do it, I want you to make mistakes and learn from them.  I don't care how much paper you use - if you cut out her dress and you don't like, do it again, you will learn every time you make a mistake."

Today, I had virtually no asking.  She pulled out her supplies and worked diligently for an hour.  She asked me to help her get some marker off because she didn't like it and wanted to make it differently.  Other than that she created it all.  Each day she will work a little on her project and on Friday she will present her retell.  I hope to record it and post it.

After working on her writing, she did her math, phonics, handwriting and piano.

Andrew worked on his math, handwriting, phonics, piano and had speech today.

Cairn worked on her math, her writing assignment (picto code), Spanish and piano.

As a group we did some math activities and started our Government lapbooks.  We just talked about the name of our Country and which continent we live on.  Poor Andrew just can't get the concept that where we live can be described many many ways.  No matter how you ask him - he says Colorado.

What country do we live in?
Colorado

Which continent?
Colorado

What city?
Colorado

What planet?
Earth

After lunch, and speech we had some friends come over to do our Group Science unit.  We did 3 different activities - a math problem solving one, we created a model of our solar system outside and learned about crytography.  The kids had a great time, learned a lot and got to play with friends.

Tomorrow we got to Elitch's!!

Writing

I am working on getting more writing into the kids' day.  It has been a struggle for some reason.  I have a curriculum that I love using with them.  I just need to get in the habit of doing it more often.

I love Brave Writer.  I purchased it a little over a year ago from Homeschool Buyer's Co-op at a great discount.  I have used some of the items off and on but when we were using COVA I had to do their stuff.  Now that we are free again, I have pulled my Braver Writer back out.

Today, Cairn did a freewrite about cats.  She wrote as much as she could about cats in 5 minutes.  I had read in Brave Writer to make sure they knew a lot about their topic before letting them write.  We talked about all the things she knew and then I let her at it.  She asked for a couple more minutes.

Then Skylar did a freewrite about cats.  We went through the same process as Cairn; talking about all the things she knew.  She really struggled with sounding out words to write them down.  I don't help with spelling, I expect them to sound out words and then when we correct, we find the correct spellings.  We will just have to work on sounding out to spell too.  She is so good at it for reading, I just assumed she could do it for spelling.

Andrew worked on making a grocery list for me.  I started writing the list, he just helped me with sounding out the words.  Then he wanted to write.  Check out his list.