Casual Tuesday

Today was just a general easy going day.   We worked on some art work.  Martha drew a picture and then told me the story.  I wrote it down on the back of the drawing.   She had gymnastics today and got the green sticker.  She did very well.  She got a mastery sticker for completion of the foward roll.  She is so close to getting the backwards roll!   I am so proud with her.   Ms. Tammy has her doing more difficult stuff than most of the kids in the class!

We also did a general easy reader today.   I did most of the reading, but Martha was helping me out!

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Tate’s Farm and the Newsletter

Well Martha isn’t going to knock down any editor’s just yet.  But we are almost finished with her first newsletter.   I think the more she does it.  And the more she gets to play with it.  The more she will have fun.

I am hoping tonight she can sit down with me and we can find some pictures of pumpkins and write about Tate’s Farm.

We went to a real working farm today.  The kids got to pick pumpkins.  And then jump into a huge pile of corn and cotton!  I have always wanted to touch real cotton.   We went in a maze!  Martha ran ahead of me and then got lost.   She found some parents who led her back to me.   She was very sorry for running off.

Becca hasn’t gone potties for hours again.  We are coming up on 5.5 hours now.   I have pushed 16 ounces of fluid in the last 40 minutes.   Hopefully she starts peeing soon. =/   I am going to ask the school to just jot down when they change a wet diaper.   Because the doctor’s don’t want her waiting for more than 8 hours with no urine output.

That is all we accomplished today.  Was the newsletter and Tates Farm!  But it is enough!  Tomorrow we move on to greater things!

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Restructuring.

As many of you know, I am homeschooling Martha!  What an eye-opening experience it has been.  Well for the last few months, I have been banging my head on the wall as has Martha.   She is frustrated and bored and I am just plain frustrated and bored.  But I didn’t know where or what to change.  So for the last 2 weeks I have been observing Martha.  What works what doesn’t work.    Then, I sent a mail out to the homeschool mom’s and said Help.   They gave me lots of incite and lots of stuff to think about.   Then I scheduled a meeting with the homeschool center’s director!    That was the best thing in the world!  She gave me lots of ideas to help Martha with just school in general.

Martha is an auditory learner (and if you are into Multiple Intelligences, I think she has a bit of nature in her as well).   So today I started our new attitude on school!   I made sure she could see outside.  We have skylights in teh family room and I positioned us in front of the big window!   Then we started with a fairly detailed book (for a 1st grader) about volcano’s, tidal waves, and earthquakes.     When we go to Costa Rica, we are going to see 3 volcano’s.     So trying to use that as a basis.  She asked lots of questions.   It was good.  Then we did 10-12 worksheets.   We did 2 subtraction (numbers 6-0), 2 addition (numbers 6-0), 2 greater than, 2 less than, 1 short o, 1 rhyming, 1 recognition of letters.  I had been working on that for over a week.  We accomplished it all in an hour!

Today she also had a class on labyrinths and mazes.  She had a good time and though the maze Sue made was pretty cool.

Some of the other ideas we are going to work on:  sketches of letter, forming words with craft sticks or pipe cleaners, labeling the house (possibly in spanish), starting a newletter!  She is really stoked about that one.  Making cookie words.   Creating an alphabet collage.  Sorting stuff by cutting things out of magazines.

Oh!  the number one rule is:  READ to her.  Read everything to her.   I read the workbooks to her.   She answers the questions.  I read stories to her.. I read her lessons to her.   We listen to audiobooks in the car.  READ READ READ!  Did I mention she is an auditory learner!

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