ART: This week at Classical Conversations, the children learned about El Greco and how the people in his paintings were very long. The children cut a drawing of a boy in horizontal strips, and glued the strips with space between to a piece of paper. Then they used tracing paper and traced the boy, making him long, like an El Greco person.
The next day, I brought home Mike Venezia's El Greco book from my school library, and we read about El Greco and how he his style was so different from other artists of his time.
POETRY: My daughter's new favorite song is Natalie Merchant's "Isabel," an Ogden Nash poem set to music. The song is from Natalie Merchant's album Leave Your Sleep, which is a collection of children's poetry set to music. In high school, I listened to a lot of Natalie Merchant, so in 2010, when I heard a sample of Leave Your Sleep on NPR, I immediately bought a copy. That was before I had a daughter to share it with. Now, at 4 years and (almost) 10 months old, my daughter is the perfect age to enjoy it. She thinks "Isabel" is hilarious. "How did she EAT a bear?!"
DANCE: They're all just so cute.
MUSIC APPRECIATION: She and I got to go to a Saturday morning family concert at The Broad Stage. It was called "Musical Explorers," and it included Greek folk music, Yiddish klezmer music, and Americana three part harmony. And it was fun! There was call and response, and body percussion, and Greek dancing. They had everyone up clapping and stomping and singing along. :)
MUSIC (PIANO): This week's songs on the piano included Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," titled "Song of Joy" in Alfred's Prep Course.
This week, my daughter surprised me by looking at the sheet music for "Song of Joy" and named all the notes. She read them because she wanted to, and she read them without even thinking. She doesn't have to think FACE or Every Good Boy Does Fine (which is how I still have to do figure out notes). I'm loving the Alfred Prep Course. It's slow, and steady, and working.
GEOGRAPHY: We finally replaced the batteries in the Leapfrog pen, and reviewed the CC geography using our Leapfrog world map.
READING: Our read alouds this week included a seven part story in My Book House called "Nutcracker and Sugardolly," and a Chinese folk tale called "The Girl Who Used Her Wits." Did I mention that she begs for My Book House?
This week, she's been reading me A CHAPTER A DAY of Magic Treehouse: Tigers at Twilight. Her idea.
MATH: With just a few pages to go in Mathematical Reasoning Level B (1st grade), I ordered Level C (2nd grade). She begged me to start Level C, so I told her I would let her :) do a page in C if she did a page in B first.
Regrouping doesn't start until page 152 (which Mathematical Reasoning still calls "carrying" and "borrowing," concepts that make sense to children). Don't anyone bother sending me hate mail regarding the words carrying and borrowing, because I won't approve you. ;)
By the way, in public school, as per Common Core, adding with regrouping has been moved down from second grade to first.
I love that the Mathematical Reasoning books are NOT Common Core aligned! I look forward to buying Levels D through G.
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