Another Day, Another Penny

I decided today that we would take our classroom to the out-of-doors. Well, out of the kitchen door onto the screened in back porch, anyway. The weather has been so nice this past week, I just couldn't stay in the house. Not to mention, we haven't turned the air conditioner on yet, and upstairs gets well into the 80's pretty quick.

The girls did pretty well in their new place. There wasn't too many requests to go outside and play. Although, math took us about twice as long as it usually does. It is the subject that takes up most of our time right now, though. We have a lot to cover. We are using Saxon Math 1, which is the 1st grade math curricula, and it has 3 different sections to cover, not including the "homework" sheet. We begin with the "math meeting" where we talk about the calender, what day, month and year it is, what our shape pattern is for the month, the weather, the time (morning vs afternoon)... We added two more things to the list this morning: a number pattern (3, 4, 5, , , what's missing?), and the coin cup. Today, the cup had 7 pennies and we counted them and talked about pennies, how much they are worth and what the cent symbol is. They enjoyed that a lot. There is just something about money, no matter how little the amount.

Then we did a sheet with the shape blocks again. Oh, jeeze, I hadn't blogged since we played with the shape blocks the first time. I need to keep up better! Anyway, the sheet had different shapes that the girls had to cover with the blocks. There were different ways to cover each one, and it was neat to see how they covered them up. When Brianna discovered that Kirsten was doing her's differently, she wanted to change hers to match Kirsten's. I told her not to do that, that they didn't have to be the same. We ended up talking about cheating, too, because she wanted to look around me to see what Kirsten had done. I don't know why, but they are both on this "we have to do/have/be the same" about everything right now. Girls, you are different, and that's good!

Next we covered some spelling and rhyming words, and did our reading lesson. Brianna is doing so well, I am excited to start her on the grammar lessons come June. I really think she is going to like learning new things, and having some things be a little bit harder for her. Right now, everything is so easy, she gets frustrated/board(?) and tells me she doesn't want to do some thing. I get, "No, no, don't make me do that" quite a bit. Good lesson in persevering. I know that it is not hard for her, she just doesn't want to do it. Especially something she has done more than two times.

Kirsten is doing well with her reading as well. She is still just beginning to figure out blending, but I know with continued practice, it will come. I can't wait for the moment when it completely clicks and she takes off. I am hoping by the end of summer, she will have it down.

The girls' ballet recital is coming up this weekend, so I will try to get some pictures of that. They are so cute in their costumes! We also have our final official field trip on Friday, so we are looking forward to that. Daddy gets to go with us this time, so that will be exciting. I'll let you know how it goes.