Thursday September 11, 2014

Choosing Day: Noel

Opening Prayer: Noel

Move Your Body: Dance video from youtube.

Stand and Share: Eliza - "I really want to play with friends because that's my favorite thing to do and I really want to after school. Done."
I shared that I listened to a talk yesterday that talked about how kids who fight and have attitude problems needed more family work. (Interesting because family work brings that out in my kids. Still, I agree and believe in that. I think family work blesses families a ton and that we will continued to learn lessons about how to do that well and to reap the benefits.)

Memorize Class: Nations of the World. This time we watched with the lyrics. That helped a ton. We're doing that from now on.

Pledge of Allegiance

Class: Art
Amy (As we were setting up for Art Class): I like home school! It's the best!
That's what I like to hear.

Noel just told me her painting is the shape of a pelelagram. She was saying parallelogram! I taught her that word a couple of weeks ago and haven't mentioned it since. I am so impressed!

pacipic - Noel's version of specific

I let the girls do whatever art thing they wanted while I nursed and looked up ideas for a simple art lesson. Noel and Eliza painted with watercolors. Amy made an awesome picture of a candy factory for Grammy and Papa. I found an idea to make a caterpillar. We watched a video of the Very Hungry Caterpillar then made it. It involved painting pieces of egg carton. We only have 6 colors of acrylic paint - red, yellow, blue, brown, black, and white. So we discussed primary and secondary colors and mixed to make the secondary colors. The whole activity was a hit. Amy had asked in her interview Sunday if we could have an art class. I was glad we obliged.

Noel was thinking about doing her music class homework for activity but changed her mind in favor of making puppets. We printed off cartoonish facial features and hands and feet and glued them onto paper sacks. Huge mess and funny creations ensued. Eliza was most interested in cutting up the papers into little pieces.

When a couple of us were done (not Eliza), I read Little Britches. The popularity of that book is growing. Noel seems to be coming around from thinking it's boring to liking it. Today we read a part where the main character, Ralph, is scolded by his dad for lying and for the impact of that choice on his character. He compares tearing down your character to pulling down part of your house and burning it when you are cold. After doing that too many times, there is nothing left. We discussed character and how you can build it or weaken it. I particularly wanted them to understand that Ralph's conclusion that his character was forever and irreparably damaged was in accurate.

Family Work today was tons better than yesterday. Still some prodding. Noel and Eliza cleaned up puppets. Amy and I worked mostly on toy room. Got the family room back to clean. It seemed like it took forever today, but we stuck with it and got it done.

Lunch.

Reading and Writing Class: Eliza started playing pretend immediately and distracted Noel. I am not sure what to do about this situation. I think it's great for them to play pretend. Especially I don't think Eliza needs to sit still for 1 1/2 to 3 hours reading and writing and drawing like the rest of us could do. Still, I want the other girls to participate or at least feel enticed to do so and not just have a free-for-all. Today I just let them play. I think usually I will tell Noel she needs to stay in the same room and be quiet so all who want to can participate. (I'm not saying silence; we interact during this class and have a good time.) I think Noel likes it, and she likes playing with Eliza so both sound good to her.

Closing Prayer: Eliza