Mice, a Lion, and the Leaves

Because of the circus, we started school on Tuesday of this week.  On Tuesday, and on every other school day, we came into the school room after our walk and began with a circle time of songs, verses and math review.  This week we continued to review skip counting by 2's ,4's, 5's and 10's while throwing a bean bag.  This week, we also started rolling the math dice that Cory and Grant made last year.  This is a good review of the math processes and roman numeral numbers.

After this, we moved onto our penny whistle lesson. 

Once we were done with that I told Grant the story of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. 

Here we see that a humble life with peace and quiet is better than a splendid one with danger and risk.

After I finished the story, Grant and I drew pictures with our block crayons.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

On Wednesday I had Grant re-tell the story, and then we came up with a summary which he copied into his MLB.

After he finished copying, Grant read the summary a couple times and then we did some LA exercises on the chalkboard.  I had Grant underline the words that ended with a "y" making an "ee" sound, and circle the words the "ou" combination.

Grant and Johanna also had fun in the school room playing a knight (complete with a basket helmet, basket shield, and sword) on his "knight" horse.....

and a princess with her princess horse.

On Thursday, I told Grant the Panchatantra story of The Foolish Lion and the Clever Rabbit.  Moral:  Intelligence is superior to physical strength. 

The Panchatantra tales are a legendary collection of short stories from India. Originally composed in the 2nd century B.C, Panchatantra is believed to be written by Vishnu Sharma along with many other scholars.  The purpose behind the composition was to implant moral values and governing skills in the young sons of the king. The ancient Sanskrit text boasts of various animal stories in verse and prose.

After I told this story using our wooden lion and rabbit figures, Grant and I drew a picture.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

On Friday, Grant chose to do part of his penny whistle lesson in an interesting position:

It didn't last very long, and afterward he said, "Mom my head feels kind of funny".  Hhhmm, I wonder why....

Once we were done with the music lesson, Grant re-told the story of The Lion and Rabbit.  We came up with a summary and he copied it into his MLB.

We also did some LA exercises on the chalkboard after Grant read the summary.  I erased a few of the words, and Grant had to write them back in.

I am also trying to make sure we read about 15 minutes everyday in school.  This week Grant started reading from this book:

The girl's set up this little play scene.  These ladies were making Halloween pies.  They had to lay down because they were so tired from making all those pies.

 Lucia made herself comfortable in the doll bed.

While I was making lunch, the kids had fun filling up this leaf bag that came in a box of Halloween goodies from Grandma and Grandpa Webb.  They came up with all sorts of ways to get the leaves in the bag.  

Check out Johanna's sweet outfit. ;)

We spent a lot of time outside this week enjoying the beautiful 70 degree autumn weather and watching the leaves start to fall. This is one of the verses I have been saying during circle time:

The trees are saying goodbye to their leaves,

as they float and flutter and fly in the breeze.

All golden, orange, and red they sink,

softy off to bed.  On Mother Earth's

breast rests each leafy head.