On Monday, Grant managed to model a pyramid after a lot of moaning and groaning. I helped him get started, and then he was able to get one going. I still don't think he's ready to try it behind his back....quite yet.
I introduced a new form drawing, and this one was a lot easier for him. He practiced it twice, and pretty much had it down. We will do some other things with this form drawing this week before he draws it in his book.
I had Grant re-tell me the stories from the 5,6 and 7th days of creation. We came up with a summary which he copied, and then he underlined the verbs.
Afterward, we drew a scene from the Garden of Eden with Adam and some animals. I think I need to get some bigger lesson books because we're feeling like we have to squish our drawings onto the page.
Mom's Picture
Grant's Picture
While Grant was doing his copy work I read Johanna a Michaelmas story from Suzanne Down's, Autumn Tales, called "Little Boy Knight". After I told her the story, we drew a picture of the little boy knight.
Johanna's Picture
This was the picture Grant drew from the story:
This week we will be doing a little combination celebration of Michaelmas and Rosh Hashanah. I didn't want to give up Michaelmas altogether because the dragon bread and stories of Saint Micheal and Saint George are so much of a tradition.
On Tuesday, Grant did his ball twirling while saying a Michaelmas verse, and he reviewed math by rolling the dice. He also practiced spelling some the 100 most common words.
Afterward, I told a Story about Saint George to all the kids, and then they helped me make the dough for our dragon bread. While that was rising, I introduced the Jewish calendar to Grant and we talked about the names of the days of the week and the month. We also talked a little about Rosh Hashanah, but we will talk more about it tomorrow and Thursday. Grant was supposed to copy the days of the week, but he was a little less than cooperative while doing this, so you will see he is missing from the pictures where the girls were decorating the dragon bread. He went into meltdown mode when I told him he wasn't going to be able to help us with the dragon bread since his work wasn't done, so he didn't finish the copy work.
This was as far as he got:
The girls had fun decorating the dragon, even though the dough didn't hold it's shape and he looked more like a blob. Oh well, he was still yummy!
On Wednesday, Grant "wrote" his own song for the penny whistle. He played the notes while I wrote them down. Once I had them all written down, he went back and played his song. He was very proud of himself.
Also, I added some more numbers to the floor of the "grasshopper" counting game, and told Grant to, "jump to one less then 13, or jump over to 2 more than 12", etc.
We also talked more about Rosh Hashanah, and I read Grant a story from A Little Garden Flower's Third Grade Curriculum which was called "The King and His Son". It is the story of the son who leaves home, falls into poverty and despair, and is able to return to his father who welcomes him home with open arms.
Grant had a MUCH better attitude on Wednesday, and was able to finish the copy work from yesterday in all of about ten minutes.
He also copied his form drawing into his book:
Once he was done with that, I had him read this book to the girls:
After he read the book, we made these simple, but fun, leaf mobiles that I saw here: Autumn Leaf Mobile
On Thursday, I introduced the musical staff and the placement of the notes and their names using a fun, imaginative story. We spent quite a bit of time on our music lesson today going over it.
I also had him re-tell me the story of The King and His Son. We came up with a short summary together which I copied onto the board, and then I had him circle the verbs and underline the nouns.
He also did a lot of reading.
Even though it was a few days late, we added some elements of Rosh Hashanah to our dinner on Sunday. It was really the only night when the boys weren't in a rush to get Grant to his Hapkido class, or joining us late for dinner after getting back from Hapkido. We said a blessing, drink grape juice, and ate challah and apples with honey. "May you be inscribed for a good year!"
