School, piano and Slick Science

Cairn has had a complete turnaround in her behavior, attitude and sweetness.  I have been reading the book, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and it is all small stuff to her at night before bed for several days.  I read one section a night.  Sometimes we discuss and sometimes I just let her think it over.  Like tonight, we read, "Choose your battles wisely."  (Good parenting advice too.)  We were able to come up with several examples of when she makes a big deal out of something a sibling did that could have been ignored.

Anyway, she has been exceptionally kind to her brother, she has completed her schoolwork with little prompting and her attitude has just been joyful.  Even her piano teacher commented on her behavior and attitude in class today.  It was Andrew's class but she always checks in on Cairn after the weekend.  Cairn has her class on Friday so we have had 4 days to practice her homework so she asks if Cairn has any questions.  Then today, after I said we were doing good she said that she had noticed that Cairn has a great attitude in class and she can tell she has more confidence in her piano skills these days.

Speaking of Andrew's piano class - he did great again today.  He was on task, followed directions and is really starting to speak up in class.  Even when the teacher doesn't hear him answer correctly, I do and he gets 90% of the questions right.  He understands rhythm and can clap his notes very well.

In school, Cairn worked on learning about triangles (acute, obtuse, right and equilateral, scalene and isoclese.  She loved it because she is so visual that she can see all those and understand.  She completed her math assignment completely on her own after a 5 minute talk and watching a video from Khan Academy (thanks again, Cappy).  She started a new History unit on the Renaissance, read about Louis Pasteur and played a spelling game, The Great Word Race.

Everyone got to play actually.  I put the words together for Andrew and then I slowly said their sounds he had guessed the word.  This is a higher level skill for him.  You really have to phonetic awareness to hear the words.  For example,  I would say, /s/......../i/ (short i)....../t/.  He loved it.  For Skylar, I would give her a chance to find a word and if she couldn't, I would put a word together and she would read it.  Cairn had to do it all on her own and you know what?  She even found some more difficult words - suit, feet - instead of just sit or get.  Cairn even had a great attitude and didn't complain about me helping the littles, she seemed to understand I was teaching them at their level.  We had a great time playing for 30 minutes.

Skylar worked on Reading Eggs, counting to 20, vocabulary words for family and friends and handwriting.

Andrew worked on counting to 10 and recognizing that even when you move the items around it is still the same number.  For example, I laid his number line on the floor and we counted white beads.  We would put on bead on each number, then we would talk about how many we had.  Then I would take them off the board and ask how many there were now?  It took one time for him to realize that the number didn't change.  The second time, we put them on the number line, took them off and then I would put them into different shapes or organize them in different patterns and he got it - the number is still the same.  He was proud.  He also worked on cutting, tracing lines, folding and puzzles.

After school, Cairn had a Slick Science class at the local library and they learned about rocks.  I wish I could have stayed in the class with her but I had to take the other 2 out.  She made a fossil, a model of the earth out of clay with a core, mantle and crust.  She also glued different types of rocks onto a sheet of paper that was labeled.  The librarian gave everyone a geode to take home to break open too.