Second Month, First Day

I have no idea what happened today, but we ran out of time before dance AND it seemed as if we didn't even do much. It might have had something to do with the three days worth of Math in one day, though.

I have been rushing through Math with Babe lately because it is incredibly boring to her because she knows it all and/or picks it up super quick. Calvert lingers for a whole week on 3D shapes, so every morning seems the same to her. So today, we finished up with them so we can start on patterns tomorrow (another thing she knows how to do).

Even though we kind of rushed through it, Math lasted for nearly a full hour today. I wanted to make sure Babe knew the names of each shape, and I wanted to make sure she could walk around the house and apply her knowledge. When she was able to match all shapes with something around the house, she sat and did her (six) worksheets.

She deserved some major playtime after that, so I let her.

We still had a good amount of time before lunch, so we started Reading Comprehension with "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse." I loved this story when I was little, so I was excited to read it again. This story was an introduction into our weekly discussion of country versus city. Surprisingly, this was pretty difficult for Babe to understand because she knows what a country is. Not "the" country. "A" country. So when I asked her if there were more cars in the city or in the country, she was a little confused.

"But aren't there cities in countries? So there's more cars in the country."

Isn't that a middle schooler's answer? I mean, really.

So I had to think of a way to revert her thinking back to plain and simple for the time being. I went ahead and read the story, and then she understood that the country mouse lived on a farm, and farm meant the same as country. Phew.

So after I read the story, we then compared and contrasted life in the city and life in the country, and that's when I started asking her the questions - more trees in the country, more buildings in the city, more cars in the city, more animals in the country.

To give her a better visual, I had her look through magazines and find things she thought people would wear, eat, live in, and play with in the city, and had her do the same with the country. She did really good! She definitely got the jyst of all the differences.

This activity actually brought up a funny moment. I had just finished asking Babe if she would wear fancy shoes or plain sneakers in the country. She told me sneakers. Definitely. After she answered, I was looking through a Chico's catalog and showed her what I saw! The models were dressed all fancy in nice clothes and high heels and sitting on bales of hay and walking through the woods!

"They must be confused."

I had to agree with her. What are the chances we'd see something like that during a discussion like this?!

We finished up this collage right in time for me to make lunch, so Babe went off to play while I cleaned and prepped. She came right back to help me clean up. So cute.

After lunch she did her Checkpoints, but since there were so many to do, there were tons of videos for her to watch and a game to play. The Reading Comp. video was very cool and had real kids explaining where they lived - urban, suburban, and rural. They each talked about their pets and how different they were for their specific life, how they each got to school, and where they each shopped, among other things. After that video, it was a definite click-moment for Babe in the difference between country and city. So I applaud Calvert on that one.

Watching all those videos took a good 45 minutes, so we hardly had time for other things I added to the day, so the 30 minutes before getting ready for dance, I told Babe it was a new month so it was time to learn a new song.

I had her sing "You're A Grand Old Flag" one more time to make sure she knew it, then I taught her the first verse of "Yankee Doodle". She practically knew it already! She sang with the music and without, and had it down pat after 15 minutes. She wanted to learn the rest but I told her we had to wait until tomorrow. So we stopped for the day.

It seemed exhausting! But it also seemed like we didn't do that much. Very interesting. I'll have to see how tomorrow goes!