Week of October 12, 2008

Bible, Math, Writing - nothing extra beyond what is going on at school

Reading -

• Here Comes Silent "e" by Anna Jane Hays
• Tricky Monkey Up On Top by Jane Belk Moncure
• Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss - this took him all week to get through but he was so proud.  It is filled with tongue twisters and nonsense words and he really had to pay attention to the words to read them correctly.

Literature - We've been taking a break from my official list, but we still read every night.  We've read some pumpkin books and also If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss.  After that book, S5 made up his own (oral) version.  For 30 minutes each Friday, a parent reader is assigned to S's school class.  She (or he, but so far it's only been moms) picks the books.  One mom has a deaf child (not the one in my son's class) and is the author of several children's sign language story books which she shared with the class.  This past Friday the mom taught the word onomatopeia (I hope I spelled it right), I'm assuming because there were some of those types of words in one or more of the books she picked.  So, Samuel has been saying the word over and over and points them out when we come across one in our readings.  On my turn, I just read three of S's favorite books.  I guess when my turn rolls around again, I'll have to do something a little fancier!

Music - Still focusing on Tchaikovsky, we watched some of the scenes from The Nutcracker Ballet on DVD and read Mike Venezia's book about Peter Tchaikovsky.  For the most part I like his books on artists and composers.  Venezia mentioned a few other of his most famous compositions so I have requested another CD from the library to listen to next week.

History - We read A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus by David Adler.

Nature - We began reading An Owl in the House: A Naturalist's Diary by Bernd Heinrich.  This is kind of long and we don't read from it every day, so it will be a while.