9.1.3.

As usual, we started the day with going over a subtraction worksheet. Once she takes her time and reads what she's supposed to do, Babe gets all the answers right. Woohoo!

Moving on, continuing our discussion into literature terms, I hand her a book called "Goodnight Gorilla" by Peggy Rathmann. I know you've heard about this book because it's so dang adorable and it's made up of mostly illustrations (not all pages have words, and the ones that do only say "Goodnight (insert animal here)". I told Babe that we were kind of going to do the opposite of what we did yesterday. Instead of illustrating a sentence out of the book, she would pretend that I can't see the pictures and tell me the story in her own words.

She struggled with this a little bit, using minimal words and speaking only in dialogue. So I had her start over and I sat at the opposite end of the table. Then I had her use more adjectives to describe what she saw so that I could better understand the story.

Once I moved away from her, she was much better about using more descriptive words.

"'Goodnight, elephant,' the zookeeper is saying. But shhh, the gorilla has all the keys and he's unlocking the cage! And the mouse is following! He's carrying a red balloon."

"The zookeeper doesn't notice that there are animals following him?"

"No because he is so tired. It's nighttime!" 

Perfect.

Once she finished that book, we ran through Reading Comprehension with "Spring is Here" by Taro Gomi. She's read this before, but I wanted her to refresh her memory on it.

We then built a writing web, and I explained to her how authors use writing webs to organize all their thoughts onto paper so that writing their book will be easier.

We started with the main topic, Spring. Then I had her think of four different things that reminded her of Spring. After her third one (she thought of gardens, nice weather, and baby animals), I told her I couldn't think of any more, but after thinking for a few minutes, she nailed it!

"Picnics!"

Amazing. I told her instead of writing picnics, write "Fun Things" and then picnics can go in there.

Once she thought of her four subtopics, I had her think of three items to attach to each of the four bubbles. She did it without a hitch.

After writing them all down, I had her illustrate her writing web. 

Too cute.

The last think on the agenda was an intro to seeds and parts of a seed. I had all the kids sit at the table and handed them their own little jar. While handing out different size seeds to each, I had Babe tell me all the parts of a tree.

"Hmm...leaves! Branches! Nests! And roots!"

Nests! Ha! I let it slide.

I then explained that just like trees have parts, so do seeds! That there are different things inside seeds. We started by peeling the seed coat from a bean seed.

 

"Why do you think it's called a seed coat?"

"Because the coat probably protects the seed from being too cold, or too hot, or too much wind."

So cute.

When they each took turns peeling the coat off, I split the seed in half and showed her the other part of the seed.

"It's so teeny tiny! It looks like a little plant! What's that called?"

"I actually don't remember. We will learn all about them tomorrow."

ha. Oops. But I did tell her she was right. That the thing she was looking at was a teeny tiny little plant that is inside the seed, and once the seed gets watered, the tiny plant hatches from the seed, just like birds hatch from eggs. 

Her eyes got so big. Then I knew she was going to love what was going to happen to her seeds in the coming weeks.

I filled up their jars with water and had them dunk their seeds in. I told them the seeds were going to be easier to peel and look at tomorrow after they've been soaking in water all night.

We set the jars up out of the way of normal activity, then it was time for lunch.


After lunch, Babe headed out for a doctor appointment and after a very fun game of Pillow Fight, Bubs and Z passed out. When Bubs woke up, she ate her snack and then I had her come to the living room for a bit of work.


I first handed her a pile of number flashcards and asked her if she could put them in order. She did! All by herself! TWICE. She did mix up 4 and 7 at first, but when we counted numerically, and counted the number of dots on the flashcard, she was able to finish strong each time.


She then saw the letter flashcards and asked if she could do those. I had them sitting to the side in case she wasn't up to working, but when she saw them, she wanted them! So I first laid out the capital letters A-F. After she named each one, I handed her a lowercase letter card one at a time and had her place it under the correct capital letter. What a breeze this was to her!

I then handed her the next pile of letters. Harder letters. I laid them all out and after she named each one (with the exception of calling X, K and Y, Q). Amazing. So one at a time again I handed her a lowercase letter. She was freakishly able to do all these too! Just amazing.

When we got to the letters covered in the farm unit, letters like P, F, and D, I had her tell me the farm animal that begins with the corresponding letters. Her recall on that was dynamite! I was very impressed. High fives and elbows all around!

 
















 

With that, Bubs' work was done and to end Babe's day, I had her read "Hello Kitty's Garden Party" for her Reading Log.


Wednesday complete!