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Sep. 14, 2005
We got started way late this morning because my husband was outside working and the kids were playing pleasantly and it just all seemed too "homey" to interrupt. Funny thing was, my daughter stayed pretty focused and flew through her work for today, so we finished up not too much later than normal.
We set aside our learning of the Law this morning in favor of her Sparks verses. When I told her to get out her bible, she asked right away if we could use her Sparks verses for our study and reasoning. At first, I thought, "No. This is what I have planned." Then I thought, "What's the point of homeschooling if I can't change the plan any time it seems appropriate?" And what could be more appropriate than an actual request from a six year old to talk about the two verses she's working on memorizing for AWANAs? So she read 1Corinthians 15:3-4, and we did a little biblical reasoning from these verses.
For spelling/handwriting, we are using the Writing Road to Reading. I thought we were stuck indefinitely on the same four phonograms. I stopped introducing new ones, because she just didn't seem to be getting them. I started out slightly disappointed because this morning she didn't know two of the ones she passed last week. I didn't want to start moving backwards, which often does happen when you are teaching right at the edge of what a child is capable of. But when we got to the ones she has been struggling with, she knew them all. Wow! I went ahead and introduced the next four, and she did pretty well with those.
In math, we did a little vocabulary practice. I wrote the number sentence 4 + 3 = 7 on our little board and labeled the addends and the sum. We talked about it and then I wrote several more number sentences down for her to identify the addends and the sum. She copied the number sentence and the labels and then we opened our bibles to Numbers 1:2. We read: "Num 1:2 Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel..." She quite excitedly pointed out that since God wanted the sum of the people, they were supposed to add them together, and addition is counting. We talked about some different reasons why we count people.
After lunch, we studied history. I decided it was about time for me to start introducing these principles. The Noah Plan focuses on the principle of Individuality in kindergarten and "Conscience is the most sacred of all property" in first grade. We weren't doing this in kindergarten, and individuality is a pretty fundamental principle, as Anna-Marie notes in her blog. So we will be focusing on it for a little while, at least. My plan is to introduce "Conscience is the most sacred of all property" when we shift from the Law to the beatitudes. It seems to fit at least in my mind. At any rate, I told her what an individual is. I asked her to name some individuals in the bible. She came up with quite a list, and we talked a little about what each of these individuals had done. It took a bit, but she finally reasoned that God works through individuals to complete His plan. I wrote that down and she copied, drawing a picture of herself because she is an individual in God's plan and He can use her as well. Later, we also talked a little about individuality, because she is really enjoying the tapes of the Little House books. I asked her some of the ways Mary and Laura are different. We talked about some of the ways that each of them are able to honor God, even though they do have very different personalities.
We practiced her Latin flashcards some, and I realized I need to get back to going through the biblical foundations for Latin with her. We haven't talked about that for awhile. I also read her a bit more from Mary Slessor, Queen of Calabar. She seems to be getting a little more interested in the story and is stopping me to ask about what is going on or what words mean. She's also quite excited because our next Linking Up packet came from Voice of the Martyrs which is on North Korea. My daughter is going to have the strangest geographic knowledge of any first grader. When I taught in the public schools, my first graders could locate TX, KS, IN Washington DC, Austin, TX, and San Benito, TX (I taught in San Benito, TX, and I showed them where I was born and where my parents lived and it stuck with most of them.). My daughter can locate Nigeria and show you where its mountains, rivers and plains are, and will soon be able to do the same with North Korea. Luckily, this is not at the expense of knowledge about the USA. We've had a US map hanging in the hallway for a long time, and she asks questions about it all the time. Whenever we have something shipped via UPS, we track to order as it is logged across the country, as well. The last time, we even looked for highways near the towns and tried to figure out which route the package was probably taking. I enjoyed that.
For anyone interested in a potential viewing of the aurora borealis, go on to the next entry. There are links for more information, but September 14 and 15 are supposed to be good days to possibly view them, even further south. Of course, we are currently under complete cloud cover, but maybe someone out there will see them!
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Sep. 17, 2005 - Hi Dana!