At the start of the day, while Babe wrote her date, I showed Bubs and Z their name cards with letters. Bubs knew exactly what to do without me showing her, and she had her name put together in no time. I walked Z through his name and each of his letters, and by the last three letters, he knew what to do. Amazing! Tomorrow we will do the same name activity.
Having Bubs and Z at the table while Babe works is so much better for me. I feel more productive. I set the timer for 30 minutes, a good length of time for them to do tub work, but after 30 minutes, they both stayed and kept working. Z built with the Kid K'Nex blocks and Bubs poured rice. They worked for a solid hour! Amazing.
During that hour, Babe was able to do Math and Reading Comprehension. Today was the first day of subtraction, but I first reviewed addition with her, making sure she understood that with addition, you are adding to the first number. She completely understands addition.
So with that, I showed her a simple subtraction problem using connecting cubes - putting seven in a pile, taking away two, leaving five. She picked up on the concept quickly so I had her try using the monkey cutouts provided by Calvert. She showed me three different subtraction problems with ease. To end the lesson, I showed her what a minus sign looked like, and how it was different from a plus sign. Just to be sure, I asked her which sign is used for an addition problem, and which sign is used for a subtraction problem. She correctly answered both. Math was complete.
For Reading Comprehension, she read "Feast for 10" by Cathryn Falwell - her first book added to January's reading log! At the end of the book, it reads that nine chairs were set, and ten hungry folks shared the meal. I asked Babe how that could be? How could ten people be at the table and eat when only nine chairs were set? She was so perplexed for a minute. She looked at the illustration and saw right away the baby on the mother's lap.
"Oh look! The baby doesn't need a chair! She's on someone's lap!"
So cute.
We then used the story to create a writing web to organize all the kinds of foods that were in the story. I separated the web into meats, grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, and desserts. Babe went through the book and wrote each food down accordingly.
When she got to the page with the beans, she looked at the illustration and started reading the labels on all the beans.
"Jelly beans, green beans, lima beans, pinto beans."
She gasped.
"REMEMBER?! Remember on our long bike ride around the neighborhood?! Pinto was the name of a road!"
She was exactly right. I then told her that it was probably named Pinto Road because Pinto is a kind of horse, a horse that looks like it's painted. I asked her if she remembered the name of the other road, and she only remembered it started with a P. I told her it was Palomino, which is the name of another horse! She was fascinated. (Later on in the day, we searched online for images of each horse, and she can now tell you the difference between a Pinto and a Palomino horse!)
After Reading Comprehension, I lined up the kids on the couch and we played a matching game with the Community Helpers puzzles I made. I first had each half of the puzzle on the floor, which each kid holding another half. I then asked questions like, "Who rides in the fire truck?" "Who bakes the cake?" If they had the correct half, they ran off the couch to their correct half. All three had a blast with this and wanted to play it over and over. I had to think up different ways to play on the fly! So after five games, I made it harder and had them each holding the puzzles so there were no halves on the floor. Then I started naming off the people. "Who has the firefighter?" "Who has the chef?" When all the people were on the floor, I then started calling out for their tools. Again, they wanted to play over and over! But I had to cut it short to make lunch. It felt good that they were having so much fun, though!
After lunch, Babe reviewed the five senses and how important it is to use scientific adjectives to describe something. I had her get her sensory tub and asked her to use her sense of touch to tell me three different adjectives. Then had her do the same with senses smell and sight. Then I took the box and told her I was going to explain what's in the box using hardly any adjectives. So I said, "There's a lot of stuff in this box."
"A lot of what? Fun toys? Colorful markers?"
"Just a lot of stuff!"
After that, she completely understood why adjectives were so important in observing and describing something.
By the time we were finished with that and her Checkpoints...and looking up horses...she was able to watch Word Girl on PBS Kids before getting ready for dance.
Like I said, what a day! A very productive one at that! Phew!
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