Year 1: Week 9

This "week" was really two weeks - the week before I started back to work, and my first week back.

I knew I was going to be too busy to think about anything other than work, so I'm glad I made the decision to start our school year early.

What I didn't realize was that Gemma's swim lessons were going to take up the greater part of my post-work/pre-bed time. 

It was well worth it, though. She is now able to swim the entire length of the pool without touching the floor. She isn't yet able to swim the distance without getting tired and needing to flip herself over on her back for a short rest a couple of times. Her coach said she only needs one more round of Fish (to build up her endurance) before she can move on to Barracuda.

Post-swim, with her completion certificate...

With a kickboard, Gemma was the fastest swimmer in her class. She won the kickboard race every class for a MONTH! That's her in the lead...

She recited her OT passage, NT passage, Psalm 150, and the two Stevenson poems. We also read several new Stevenson poems (she read a couple on her own). We sang our hymn, and our foreign language songs.

Her fairy tale was Cinderella; she read it on her own and narrated to me when I got home. Her narration was, "Cinderella planted a hazelnut tree, with just one twig! I never knew! And the tree threw down three splendid dresses, each more splendid. The third one was splend-est. And the stepsisters cut off part of their feet!"

This week's fable was "The Dog and the Shadow."

This week's Bible passage was The Call of Samuel. 

For history, we read Our Island Story (Albion and Brutus), A Child's History of Art: Architecture (Mud Pie Palaces and Temples), and On the Shores of the Great Sea (The Siege of Troy).

She did Duolingo Spanish and French, and practiced piano daily.

For handicrafts, we made an origami elephant. I helped with the trickier folds, but Gemma did most of the elephant. She did the inside reverse folds on the tips of the ears, the feet, and the tip of the trunk entirely by herself.

For natural history, we read The Burgess Seashore Book "Reddy Fox Meets Big Claw" (about lobsters), and started a new book (Plant Life in Field and Garden). The chapter we read was "A Shepherd's Purse." In it, the narrator instructs the reader to go out and pull up a weed, and observe the weed's roots and rootlets.

The chapter also mentioned manure, so Gemma learned a new word.😉

For geography, we read chapter 5 of CM's Elementary Geography ("The Star"), which is the complete version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by Jane Taylor; we also read The World By the Fireside "Ships Set Fast in the Ice" (about the Northwest Passage, with a mention of the Panama Canal), and "Floco and his Ravens" (a story about how Iceland was discovered).

To enhance our geography studies, we watched some videos from the "Countries Around the World" series (each 13 minutes) and the "Families of the World" series. Our history lessons have been focused on the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, so we checked out videos from the library about Egypt, Israel, Turkey, and Greece. We also recently read about "Lapland," so we watched one on Finland.

We re-viewed Children of the Open Air's sol-fa 6A video (Bye Baby Bunting, with "la.") 

Gemma continued working on cursive...

For math, we did Life of Fred: Kidneys chapter 10. Not-so-secret secret: I don't make Gemma do math daily. We do math formally once or twice a week. In the future, this will change. (It would take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to learn, say, algebra completing only one or two lessons per week.) But can a child learn elementary math with only one or two formal math lessons per week? Yes. Another question I've gotten is, "Does Life of Fred provide enough practice?" People are used to math workbooks with 30 similar problems on one page. Life of Fred: Kidneys chapter 10 had only FOUR problems! But each "Your Turn to Play" is a multi-step problem. For example, number 4 was the equivalent of 15 problems!

For artist study, Gemma chose "Carriage at the Races," and for composer study, we listened to Beethoven's Turkish March (and just for fun and comparison - Mozart's Turkish March). Also, we listened daily to KUSC 91.5 - our classical music radio station - on the commute to and from swim.

Our current free read is Pinocchio. We're 2/3 through and we love it. In the car the other day, Gemma asked, "Mom, is it true that a person can die of sorrow?"

Pete also took Gemma to play with friends in the forest at Temescal Canyon, to the park for a Little Explorers lesson about space, and took her bodyboarding on his surfboard. That beach day was my third day of work. While my students were reviewing/learning procedures, getting to know each other, and taking diagnostic assessments, my daughter was "at school" surfing with Daddy.😆 I love it.

So, looking back over the past two weeks, we did quite a bit, and I survived the first week back at work.