Poem Memorization

Elves Song
by J.R.R. Tolkien

Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together!
The winds in the tree-top, the wind's in the heather;
The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower, And bright are the windows of Night in her tower.

Dance all ye joyful, now dance all together!
Soft is the grass, and let foot be like feather!
The river is silver, the shadows are fleeting;
Merry is May time, and Merry our meeting.

Tuesday

Today we completed our final lab in our Human body Unit. It was our favorite so far. We made fingerprints by using a pencil and rubbing it on a piece of paper and rubbing each finger into the pencil led. Then we took clear tape and pressed each finger to the tape and put the tape with the prints onto his lab sheet. It was really neat to see each print so clearly with this method. Avery compared prints from each family member and even tried to figure out a "mystery print" by comparing it to the other prints he collected from the rest of us.

Now he is very eager to start the Animal Kingdom, making Science his favorite subject without a doubt!



For language today after completing his spelling lesson we did a new journal activity from a little journal idea book I picked up from the education store last week. The first entry asked Avery what would happen if in the story Jack and the Bean Stalk the Giant caught Jack. What would they say to each other?

What he ended up writing was simple, maybe two full sentences, but at least he was excited to write something. I told him there are no rules, you can write outside the lines, you can use capitol letters where ever you like and I won't even correct your spelling! He was very pleased with all of that. When I gave him freedom to make mistakes I saw him relax and enjoy the process more. That is what a journal is for. Free thoughts, no limitations, just a place to be oneself with out scrutiny. Amen!

Days of the week

In our grammar text we are suppose to be reviewing the days of the week. Avery usually knows what day it is, but I thought it would be fun to make a game out of it. First I had him name the days of the week in order so that I could write them down on construction paper, then we discussed what activities we do on each day, I wrote that down and cut it out in to strips. I shuffled it all up and had him tape the activity next to the day that we do usually do it. He was relieved to do this activity instead of copying the days of the week and writing for himself what he does when. He's not too fond of writing at this point, I'm hoping that changes as the year wears on.

In the afternoon we went to their grandmothers house and had a little Halloween party where both of the boys decorated their own gingerbread haunted houses! Emile's unfortunately didn't make it home in one piece, but he certainly found it tasty.

Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween weekend!

Fall poem

Fall by Avery

Fall has come to make places chilly.
We make fires and get really silly.
Pumpkins, trees and leaves,
clouds that are funny if you please.

A beautiful day

What a beautiful fall day ! We woke up and made yummy pumpkin spice muffins and went outside for school and play. Emile busied himself with this homemade oatmeal "sand" box where he does loads of pouring and filling, also he had a Tupperware full of assorted dry beans that he pretended to cook and then after he was done planted them in the garden. Daddy will have a little surprise come spring when Lima's, black, red and navy beans start sprouting up all over the place.

Avery worked in his math book, finishing up the review tests. Now we are ready for the second half of the first grade workbook.

In grammar we did more labeling of sentences (nouns and verbs). For a little fun I had him make up some sentences talking about an animal and what the animal was doing- then acting the sentence out in the yard. They both had loads of fun doing that!

Here's a few of their thoughts:

"The lion ran across the field."

"The ant bit the man."

"The bat swung from the tree."

"The elephant danced on one foot."

The last one was especially funny to watch them act out!

This afternoon (so that I can have a rest) we are going to watch a DVD on deep sea life. Avery has always been fascinated with ocean life and all of the amazing creatures that exist in that ecosystem. So in asking him what he would enjoy learning about this week (just for fun) he requested creatures of the deep sea. We also went to the library and checked out books to go along with his peaked interest.

So a nap is calling at the moment. Enjoy this beautiful fall weather if you can!

Story time

Here is a funny story Avery made today after I asked him to create an adventure story that includes him and other people. We needed to use our new pronouns : we, us, our and ours. He
had a blast brainstorming about crazy plots and funny twists to his already wacky story. He
ended up with a very long list of potential stories that include such titles as "The forest on a full moon", "A boat ride on a sunny day", and "The slimy sea monster". You can tell we read a lot of Magic Tree House books by the sound of these titles. Here is Avery's story...

The Haunted Mall

Once upon a time my friends and I went to the mall. We were looking for a magnet. The magnet was to trick our moms. We were going to do an experiment pulling metal out of cereal. So when we drop the magnet into the cereal it attracts all of the iron.
We started to get lost in the mall. We were in the army section. We looked around for a second then we got out because we all had a bad feeling we were being watched.
We ran and ran and ran until we got to the doors that were open and it led us into a toy store.
We stared down at the ground and there were two toys walking toward us. They were dolls. My friend Olive thought they looked familiar. Then we looked up, we saw twenty-three dolls lined up to jump down. They were about to jump when I had the idea to spray them with antioxidants. They were all electrocuted and walked away for good.
We realized we were in the magnet section again. We found our magnet and zipped out of that creepy mall.

The End.

Lots of letter writing yesterday! We are learning about pronouns this week and decided to get creative with it, so we wrote letters to our friends and afterwards I made copies and put them in our language binder where Avery highlighted all of the pronouns in the letters. I also wrote sentences and had him highlight the ones with pronouns used incorrectly.

While Avery did that Emile insisted on writing his friends letters as well. He now wants to do whatever Avery is doing in "school". If Avery is doing math Emile wants to do math. He brings me Avery's old math workbook from last year that I gave to him to play with and says "momma talk to me about this!" I foresee it being much easier to school him when the time comes. I won't have to bribe and beg him to do his work, he'll just follow Avery (hopefully).

We also started in our human body unit learning about how muscles work. Completing a paper model of a working arm, yarn representing the muscles. When the yarn is pulled the arm moves. The point of the lab was to demonstrate how muscles work in pairs. Fun stuff! We also are loving the human body coloring book that we have listed in the learning tools icon on the sidebar. It goes along perfectly with our curriculum!

Later: Finish reading Harry Potter (almost through with book two!) then art class and soccer practice! Big first game this weekend!!!

A good day

I'm not too sure if I should post everyday, as most days are pretty routine and uneventful. Like yesterday for example we did our book work (spelling and math) then spent the whole day reading the rest of Harry Potter! We stayed in our jammies, locked ourselves in the boys new bedroom and ignored the rest of the world so that we could spend the day in Harry's world! It was so exciting!! We cannot wait to get started on the second book in the series. It is so wonderful to see Avery really get into a novel like this, where you are so attached to the characters and find it hard to tear yourself away from the book. Such a good feeling, so glad to share this with him!

Today we focused on our grammar lesson where we are learning about adjectives. We played a fun game kind of like I spy where one person thinks of a noun to describe and the other person has to try and figure out what the noun is according to the clues (adjectives) given. He loved that and it really helped reinforce what adjectives are.

After we got all of the writing out of the way, did some math puzzles in his workbook then onto history! This week it's all about ancient Africa, specifically west Africa. To go along with the history text and map work we drew pictures of life in this region at that time, read tons of African folk tales and today we even made handmade African beaded necklaces made from recycled magazines. Tonight I think we will cook an African inspired meal from a story we read today about Anansi the spider- Plantains, cassava (I think we will just use potatoes) and rice.

until next time...

For the love of writing

One of my goals when I took on homeschooling was to make Avery a proficient writer and hopefully instill a love of this form of expression, avoiding pressure to "do it right". I think I found the perfect writing curriculum to help me with my goal. Here are just a few of the Writing Principles they list at the beginning of the book by Dave Marks- I just about fell in love!

• "Every person needs to learn to express ideas and feelings in writing."
  
• "There is no right way to write anything!"
  
• "The ability to write is not an expression of a body of knowledge that can be learned like a list of vocabulary words."
  
• "Writing teachers and their students both learn in any effective writing situation."

How liberating is that!? I am so excited to start writing with Avery. He is such a bright boy with so many wild ideas floating around in his head, and writing is such a huge endeavor. To be able to put your thoughts on paper has got to be one of the hardest things to learn, and teaching it even harder. With this book I feel a little more at ease guiding him through the process.

Happy Writing!!