Seasons and Time

The first two days of last week we did a quick review of the seasons.

(This drawing was inspired by Our Little Nature Nest.)

On Monday, we came into the school room after lots of outdoor play, and Grant set to modeling a cube with the fingertips of both hands behind his back.

He did pretty good with it.  Let's see how he does next week just using one hand behind his back :)

After that we did some math review with our beanbags.  I threw it to him and told him a number.  He through it back to me telling me a way to get that number.  I made sure he used all four operations before we were done. 

After math review, we moved on to penny whistle lesson.  Grant is now learning "Shortin' Bread". 

Once we were done with all of that, we talked about Autumn and Winter.  We talked about the activities that happen during those seasons, what's going on with the harvest and around us in nature, and what festivals and holidays we celebrate.  Afterward, I read these books: 

When I was done reading the books, Grant and I drew pictures in our lesson books about Autumn and Winter, and Grant copied a verse onto each page. This week we are back to using our block crayons only.

 Mom's Autumn Drawing

Grant's Autumn Drawing

 Mom's Winter Drawing

Grant's Winter Drawing

Grant and I did some more knitting in the afternoon.  This is what Grant's elephant will look like when it's done (but his will be blue):

Cute little dude, huh?

On Tuesday, we reviewed some math with the game "What did I do?" and some math equations using his wooden math dice.  Then we moved on to music lesson, and then continued our review of the seasons.  We talked all about Spring and Summer and I read these two books:

After reading these, Grant and I drew Spring and Summer pictures in our lesson books.  Grant also copied some seasonal verses onto the pages.

Mom's Spring Drawing

Grant's Spring Drawing

Mom's Summer Drawing

Grant's Summer Drawing

On Wednesday, I read this book as a quick "review" of all four of the seasons.

Afterward, Grant and I started talking about analog time and how to read a clock.  We talked about all the parts of the clock (he knew most of them already), we talked about there being 24 hours in a day, but we divide it in half into a.m. and p.m., we talked about 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute.  We made a list of activities that Grant does during a day, and what time he usually does them.  Once we had that done, we made this clock:

We looked at the times on his list, and he made it be that time on his clock.  He really did do well with this.  After we went through the list, I gave him some random times to show me.

On Thursday, I told Grant a story of a little gnome named Mr. Time who met and married a tall elf.  They had many children (12 to be exact) and soon their little cottage in the woods became to small for all of them.  The 12 children decided to build cottages in a circle around their Mom and Dad's cottage.  They all had children of their own (5 to be exact).  Grandma Time called the little elf children minutes.  Grandma and Grandpa loved to visit their grandchildren, but Grandpa liked to stay for longer.  He would stay at one cottage while Grandma Time made her way around the circle.  When she got back to the cottage he was at, he would move onto the next one.  I thought this made the clock a little more interesting. 

We also used his list of activities and times to draw a page of clocks in his lesson book showing times for four of the activities.  He really enjoyed using the compass and drawing the clocks.

I told him another story called "Farmer Jack" about a farmer and the times he did all his various chores.  When I told Grant the times, he showed them to me on the clock we made.

On Friday morning the kids made a snowman.  I have no explanation for the smaller-than-average-size head, but the carrot is sticking out of the top because he is looking up.  The carrot didn't last 15 minutes because Julia took it out and started eating it.  I'm OK with that.  Raw veggies = good.  Johanna, no surprise, was upset she didn't have her own carrot, so she ended up helping Julia eat the last little bit of it.

And, yes, little Julia is wearing two different mittens.  Why, you ask?  The pink ones pretty much suck and are hard to get on and tend to fall off.  Johanna has pink ones, like the blue one you see, which are great.  Cory remembered Grant having blue ones like that so he went looking for them.  So far we have only been able to come up with one of them.  One is better than none, right?  We WILL continue the hunt for the other awesome mitten.  Until then, Julia thinks it cool to have a blue mitten.

After the outdoor playtime, we headed into the school room for a little bit.  Grant had to finish up some copy work from the week, and then I read Grant and Johanna this book:

Next week we will be moving back into a Language Arts block using stories about Saints. No more of those "up-to-no-good" animals from the fables ;) We will now focus on looking at some of the more noble qualities of man.