Homeschool Day 73 - Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Reading: We read Are You My Mother by PD Eastman. The baby bird hatches from it's egg to discover it's mother is missing. I enjoy really making this book come alive by having Shayla make the animal sounds as the bird asks "Are you my Mother?" Then we talked about animals and the names given to baby animals (cat-kitten, etc) (science). We also played a Memory game matching mothers and babies. BTW, I won that one, but we enjoyed counting who had more and less matches (math, comparison). I asked if you were the baby bird what would you have done? She came up with several ideas, look for mother bird, but tweet loudly or stay in the nest and wait for mother bird. (language) She also completed a wkbk page writing living/non-living items in the correct columns. The words were vocabulary words from the story.

Phonics/Reading: She did Abeka lesson 12. She has gotten out of practice with her reading and phonics and started to become frustruated, so I let her take a break from the lesson by solving these wooden word puzzles. It did the trick. She was able to complete her lesson after the puzzles.

Language: We reviewed nouns. She understands this pretty well for a 1st grader. I introduced adjectives to her. I wrote phrases on the white board and she circled the adjective. Then we did a workbook page about sneakers. She liked this page because it started off with The Stinky Sneaker. . .

Spelling: She's working with short e sound words. She did a workbook page, then she was supposed to take her spelling pretest. Instead of writing the words, she sat on her therapy ball and bounced while she spelled the words.

*Note: Add part-time OT to my job description. LOL! Maybe I can add it to my resume. Where did I graduate from? Uh, the University of Real Life!

Phys Ed: I promised her some much needed outside time, (in between the snow and freezing rain we got today)but the swingset and trampoline are covered with snow (and it was downright cold). I hate making promises to my children that I can't keep, so she happily bounced on the little trampoline in the house!

Social skills: Communications. I had planned on only addressing Shayla's shyness and anxiety issues, but I came across several books at the library that I thought would be fun to use. Polite as a Princess was definately fun for us! Shayla dressed up as a princess and we had a tea party. During the tea party, I read the book to her. We talked about manners and different social scenarios. I explained to her that it is rude to not speak when someone speaks to you. I don't think she had ever thought of it this way.

To drive home the lesson, the Barbie we used yesterday as Shy Violet encouraged Shayla to talk and how easy it was.

. . . And since we were on the Princess theme, Shayla and I sat down and watched part of her Cinderella video. Well, technically, I guess she watched. I fell asleep, but since she wanted to turn off the lights, so it was like the movie theater, I don't think she noticed! LOL!