Three. Two. Three.

Today in Math, Babe reviewed the number 9. Then she did her worksheets. Then Math was over.

We went right into Reading Comprehension, where I read her "Shoes from Grandpa" by Mem Fox. We both really liked that book, and Babe recalled each detail really well, from the order in which the man character received clothes, AND who gave her the clothes. When we were done, I turned it into an English lesson and had her practice more with singular and plural nouns.

We went through the story again and I had her write down each noun in the sentences. Then I told her we were going to either make them singular or plural, the opposite of what they were. Again, she was very good at this. The only one I did myself was "scarf." I showed her how it's supposed to be changed, and then wrote it myself. I think this is still a good idea - having me write it, because out of the blue yesterday, she told me that she remembered that the plural of mouse is mice, not mouses. How cool.

After Math and Reading, we did a physical activity that I think both Babe and Bubs would have done all day. I put dried oats in one bowl and dry rice in another and put each on two corners of the dining room table. Opposite of each bowl, I put an empty bowl. Then I gave each one a plastic spoon and told them to spoon out their ingredients, walk the length of the table, and empty their spoon into the other bowl. I told them it wasn't a race so there was no need to run. They both loved this activity so much, they asked to do it again, then they wanted to switch sides! Since it wasn't a race, they were encouraging each other. It was really cute.

After this activity, we were done for the morning.

After lunch and naps, we did Babe's Science lesson on conserving energy. We talked about leaving the lights and the TVs on when we leave the room, leaving the water on while brushing our teeth, leaving the doors wide open when the air is on, and how each of those things are a waste of energy. We discussed how saving energy is good for the planet and causes less pollution, which helps us all breathe better.

When she was done with her worksheets, I had Babe make and design signs for the light switches in the three most common rooms she visits - her bedroom, the bathroom, and the spare bedroom. The signs were to be big and to catch her attention so as she passes them, she can remember to turn the lights off! They turned out really cute.

And with the end of Science came the end of the day. We headed outside to enjoy the cooler weather and to play soccer for the next hour!

Three. Two. Two.

Today in Math, it was the mid-chapter review so we went over numbers 0-8, and spelling of each. First, I had her put the numbers in order, using only the words.

Done.

Then I took three numbers away and had her fill in each space the appropriate number of bugs (my next mission is to find some Thanksgiving/Fall manipulatives).

Done.

Then I had her do a little spelling test, like last week, to spell numbers 0-8.

Done. Except I told her that one of them was spelled wrong. I asked her if she knew which one. She immediately, seriously, with no hesitation, said that seven was spelled with an 'e', not an 'i'. So then I had her rewrite it.

OK now we were really done...after she did her worksheets.

Next was Reading Comprehension where I re-read "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (she knows this story by heart). So after I was done reading, we went over the details, and then I set up a textured art craft.

I split up a sheet of paper into three parts and handed the kids dry oats, felt pieces I cut into rectangles, and toothpicks. We reviewed the order of things that Goldilocks tried in the house and I instructed Babe to draw some bowls of porridge, then build some chairs, then make the beds, each in their appropriate space on the sheet of paper. Each of the kids made their own and they all had fun with the oats. Bubs had more fun with the toothpicks, spreading the glue around the paper.

Z's turned out really good. He actually used all his ingredients and he's getting better and better with liquid glue!

Bubs didn't use her felt pieces, but used her toothpicks as tools to spread out the glue for the oats. Kind of cool actually.

And here's Babe's. So cute. Don't you love the red steam coming from the top bowl, to show how hot it is?! And the broken chair on the bottom of the middle space!?

Adorable.

After lunch and during naps, I did an exercise with Babe to practice her nouns and adjectives, and to reinforce how important adjectives are. We went through what she was wearing today and I had her only use nouns: shirt, skirt, earring. Then I had her write "hair" and "eyes."

Then, I had her draw a picture of herself, but only using the descriptions in the list she just made.

"What colors can I use?"

"Well, does your list explain what colors you are wearing?"

"No, because colors are adjectives and you told me I couldn't use any adjectives."

Awesome. So I had her use a pencil.

When she was done with her picture, I had her make a second list with the same items, but this time using nouns and adjectives. I introduced using multiple adjectives and separating them with commas (which she is already good at because of the date she writes every morning). When she was done with her list, she got to draw her second picture, this time using color!

She really liked this activity so I might expand on this a little bit in the near future.

After an episode of WordGirl on PBS Kids, it was time to get ready for dance. Yay Tuesdays.

Three. Two. One.

Well, we are well into the third month now! I can't believe it. I looked ahead in Math a bit and next week we finally start something different - fractions! Woo! I'm excited for that. I foresee lots of pizza-eating for lunch in the coming weeks.

Speaking of Math, we started off with it today and reviewed number eight. Then she did her worksheets. Then we moved on.

I read her "Is Your Mama a Llama?" by Deborah Guarino next. Cute story! It was an intro into our discussion on generations and different family members. I explained to her what a family tree was, and how it shows every member of the family. So I had her write her and her sister's names at the bottom of a sheet of paper, then her parents' names above theirs, and then we just went nuts. We went up four generations high because Babe's great-grandmother is still alive. She found out how many cousins she has ("Whoa that's a lot of kids!") and how many brothers and sisters her mom has! A couple she's never met! We looked at pictures to match faces to names and she had a really great time with this activity. At lunch, she randomly threw out the name "Birdine" to her mom, who asked if she remembered who it was.

"Grandma's mom!"

Then we all learned that Birdine made homemade pies and jams from fruits from her own garden! And that Babe's mom would sometimes be able to go into that garden and help! Too cool.

It's a little hard to see because of how small Babe wrote, but you can definitely tell there are lots of people in the family. This was definitely a cool discussion. It lasted nearly an hour!

Just in time for Sid the Science Kid, which of course I swear by. Especially after tonight, hearing Babe's dad tell me that this weekend Babe was playing "golf", and when the ball went past the cup she said, "Aww...too much force, right dad?"

WHO DOES THAT?!

Babe does that.

After lunch, she "read" me the wordless story of the week, "The Birthday Party." I still can't get over how cute Babe's dialogue is when she has to make it up.

"Come on let's set the table for my party mom!"

"Aww honey I forgot about that!"

I laughed so hard. In my head.

We then worked on the tune for "My Country 'tis of Thee." She knows all the words, she just sings it to her own tune. I had her sing it to the music over and over a few times until she started getting it. We will practice some more this week; then hopefully Friday she'll have it down so I can get a recording.

By now we had about an hour until dance, so I gave her a book to read for her reading log. She read "Next to an Ant" by Mara Rockliff. As she was reading it, I thought of an activity for her to do to practice her singular/plural words.

When she was finished and it was added to her reading log, I had her pick out every naming word in every sentence and write it down. She did VERY well with this. I was really impressed.

After she had them all written down, I then had her write their plural forms next to each word. Again, I was very impressed with her memory on how to do each ending. Even the -y endings came very natural to her. The only one I did myself was mouse/mice. I wasn't ready to explain that one to her, yet.

And with that, we were done with the day. Off to dance!

Three. One. Four.

It's Friday, Friday, Friday, ohhhh...

Yay Friday! Today was another full but very fun day. We started off with Math again, where Babe finished up her 60th Math lesson! WOW! She's up to number seven now, in writing the number and spelling it out. Today, I even tried to challenge her a bit, but it didn't work. I spelled out each number, cut them out, and had her put them in order.

She did it. No problem. Awesome.

After her worksheets, Math was done. Then I gathered the kids on the couch and read "A House is a House for Me" by Mary Ann Hoberman. We all loved that book and the illustrations were fun to look at. Bubs tried to find a teeny tiny mouse on every page. Each page had soooo many things to look at, it was almost interactive!

After I finished reading, we went outside (braving the cold front arriving with a very strong wind) and I had Babe draw a picture of her house to go along with today's discussion on homes. I was very impressed with her drawing!

She even included a peachy-orange to match her roof! When she was done with her house, I had her draw everyone who lived in it. Don't you just love her dad's spiked hair?

We set this aside for later on in the day, since we were eating an early lunch and meeting her parents for ice cream. We headed to the library after ice cream so I could gather up some Thanksgiving books for the coming weeks.

We got back from the library and returned to talking about her home, how others have different kinds of homes, and we reviewed her address and phone number for emergency purposes.

After our discussion, I went into Science with her where we learned more about protecting the environment by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Babe had a good grasp on this stuff since she learned a lot about it in VPK, plus we are constantly reusing paper and plastic fruit cups for planting seeds. So this was basically a quick review, but then I handed her "Max Goes to the Recycling Center" by Adria F. Klein. She read it all by herself and got to add it to her reading log. This book led me to e-mail a local Waste Management office to find out if there are any recycling centers in the area where we can actually see bottles and newspapers made into new things. That would be awesome! Here's hoping for a field trip in the near future!

After that, Babe did her online computer lesson on Data Storage and again got all the questions right! We seem to have a technology buff in our midst. Seriously though, Calvert makes these little videos so cute, using a great narrator and a cute little owl to lead the lesson. She loves it.

We finally ended the day with that. After cleaning up a bit and setting everything out for her parents, I again gathered the kids on the couch and read "Home for a Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown.

Cutest. Book. Ever.

Even Bubs, at the end, seeing the bunnies cuddled up in their home, said, "Aww look at the cute bunnies!"

Like I said, another full but fun day! Phew!

Three. One. Three.

It was another beautiful day today so we spent the morning outside again. For Math, Babe practiced her 6, did her worksheets, then she was ready to move on.

She read "Tortillas and Lullabies" by Lynn Reiser for Reading Comprehension. She was a bit confused about how generations worked, but when she finished the book, I explained it to her a bit more. I asked her who she thought was the oldest person in her family was.

"Mom."

"You have someone in your family even older than mom!"

"Hmm...dad? No, I know that mom was born first."

I had to chuckle.

I explained to her that GG (Babe's great-grandmother) is the oldest person in our family, and that her daughter is Gramma. And that Gramma is a mom to Babe's dad. She kind of started seeing it, but I could see that she was still a little confused, so I had her draw it.

I took her drawing and I reread "Tortillas and Lullabies", replacing the familial terms the author used with the terms we use.

By the third part of the story, Babe was understanding how families, more specifically generations, worked.

After a bit more of a discussion on families, we went into Science and learned about pollution and things that make our environment sick.

Babe is a stickler for littering and wants to pick up every piece of trash she sees on the ground, so she was in full understanding of how litter makes our planet sick. I asked her if she could think of any other things that make the air dirty, or make the animals and plants sick.

"Bird poop?"

Leave it to her to bring that into the conversation.

I explained to her that smoke can make the air really dirty and makes it hard for us and animals to breathe. We talked about cars, factories, and cigarettes and how each one produces smoke. Then I brought up how sometimes, oil spills into our oceans and makes the water dirty, which sometimes kills the animals and plants that live in it.

"Like that one boat did a long time ago?"

Yes, she is talking about the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf. How she remembers that, I have no idea, but I do remember it happening and her seeing some of the images on TV.

To help her better understand what oil can do to animals, I brought out two bowls, one filled with vegetable oil and one filled with water. Then I gave her two pom-poms to pretend they were feathers, and had her stick one into the oil and the other into the water.

She immediately noticed how heavy the oiled pom-pom got. I asked her if she thought birds could fly with heavy feathers like that.

"No way! They'd fall into the ocean!"

When she put the second pom-pom into the water, she noticed the weight didn't change at all. I asked her what she thought would happen if a bird's feathers got wet.

"We just saw a bird dive into the lake and then it flew away!"

Bingo. And she was right. There was an osprey circling the lake a few times before it finally dove for a fish. I love the natural visuals we get.

The aftermath of our experiment was...messy. But Babe noticed how fast the watered pom-pom got, and how messy the oiled pom-pom stayed. After her Science worksheet, we were done for the morning. We finished just in time for Bubs's and Z's class at the library, so we were off!

After lunch, I attempted to sit Babe down and have her write her book, knowing she was a little tired. We got as far as her decorating the cover before she got frustrated at me because I was restricting her word usage for the book, and by that, I mean, bluntly, I wouldn't let her write 100 words per page like she wanted. So we took a break from the book and I told her we would try again tomorrow.

It was a good time to run into her online lesson on parts of a computer, but since the home computer is broken down, I brought my laptop. I set it in front of the real computer though, so when the video was showing her and explaining the different parts of the computer, she'd be able to physically see each one.

She got a perfect score on the quiz at the end, and after that she was very fluent in computer speak, meaning she had a very good understanding on which devices were input and output.

We printed out her little certificate from Oliver the Owl and she was good to go - a very proud student.

While Bubs and Z were still napping, I taught Babe the rest of November's song, "My Country 'tis of Thee." After about 30 minutes, she had it down pat and sang it with the music multiple times. Another proud moment!

She spent the rest of the day doing the last few days' worth of Checkpoints.

Another completely full day! I love these kinds of days. They are sure exhausting, but totally worth it. And seeing Babe have as much fun as she is having everyday makes it that much more awesome.

Three. One. Two.

It was a beautiful day today, so we spent most of it outside again! We did our morning lessons outside, ate lunch outside, then played outside before naps. The fresh air was amazing!

We started with Math, where we ended Chapter 4 and Babe reviewed all her numbers 0-5. She was able to put the number cards in order 0-5 and 5-0. She was also able to spell each number correctly!

Very cool.

Something else as awesome happened during Math today. Bubs wanted to play with the number cards and bugs, like last week, so I put the number cards in order and asked her to put the right number of bugs on each one. I was helping Babe with worksheets when I hear, "I'm done!" And what do you know! This is what I saw!

Pretty cool, huh!? I was so shocked and amazed. She had the biggest smile on her face too. I asked her to show me which one had one bug on it, and she did. Then when she turned around to run back in the house, I asked her to show me which one had three bugs on it, and she showed me the right one! I gave her a high five and let her go play. So awesome!

When Babe was done with all her Math worksheets, we went into Reading Comprehension where I read her "Jonathan and His Mommy" by Irene Smalls. It's a cute story about the different kinds of steps Jonathan and his mom take while on their walk around the neighborhood. After the story, I introduced a writing web to Babe. I put "Ways to Move" in the center of the web, and had her tell me all the ways she could think of to move your body. She thought of a lot! I forgot a picture, but I told her that tomorrow we will use this web to write another book. I explained that authors sometimes use writing webs to help them write whole books. I don't think she understood it quite yet but I'm pretty sure tomorrow we will.

While we were out on the patio for lessons, our neighbors, two huge sandhill cranes that regularly graze in the yard, came waltzing into the backyard. The kids love watching them and sometimes we are lucky enough to see their little dance and hear their calls. While watching them eat up the grubs in the yard, I thought this was the perfect time to introduce Babe to a previous day's Science lesson on environmental protection.

I explained what "environment" was, and how living things help each other. I explained that some animals eat plants, some animals live in the trees, some animals live in the water, etc. I gave her a brief intro on living and non-living things in the environment and she was a bit confused on the two. So I gave her the basic definition that if it eats and drinks, then it is a living thing. She started understanding after that.

"So the big birds, they are eating bugs right now, so they are living?"

"Yep!"

"And the bugs they are eating are probably the bugs that eat the stuff from our flowers, so they are living, right?"

"Good job! You are right!"

Without wanting to confuse her anymore, I pretty much left it at that for the day and gave her the Science worksheet. She was directed to draw a picture of her surrounding environment.

With that, we were done until lunch. I went into the back office to start putting things away for the time being, and was reminded of something I knew I had to share. Babe and I look at the calendar every day of the week, where I have her tell me what number the day is, plus tell me the full date. I also have her write it down. I have had her write the date every day since day one. Today, I asked her to write in her very best handwriting, something she's been practicing for the past week or two. I was shocked at how beautiful it was! So I'm going to share the progression from week one.

These are week one's dates. I was not interested at all in "best handwriting." I was more interested in having her practice both letters, numbers, and commas.

These are last week's dates. Towards the end, you can kind of tell how she was trying to write in her best handwriting, which apparently to her means "small."

These are this week's, so far! I can't believe the difference. It just looks beyond perfect! I told her how impressed I was and how good it looked!

"I'm going to write like this from now on!"

OK then!

After lunch, and after the Littles were off to bed, I had Babe start her November reading log with "Pumpkin, Pumpkin" by Jeanne Titherington. It inspired me to have the kids grow their own pumpkins in the Spring for the Fall. Something to look forward to! How cool will that be!?

We did one last thing before Babe went for a nap, and that was starting to learn a new song for November! I first had her sing "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Yankee Doodle", the previous months' songs, and she did! Perfectly! Didn't forget one lyric. Then I introduced November's song, "My Country 'tis of Thee." Babe was pretty tired at this point, so I only had her learn the first three lines, but even that was tough for her. I explained to her that the words seem a little "weird" because the song was written so long ago, and some of their words then were different from some of our words now. No doubt the language made it a bit difficult for her to learn, but after about twenty minutes or so, she was able to sing the lines.

I love full days like this! We got a ton done and Babe worked through each lesson like a champ. She is learning so much and it's so cool watching her grow. And Bubs doing that Math activity was icing on the cake!

Three. One. One.

Third month. First week. First day.

Today's blog post will be picture-less.

Due to last night's late festivities and it being a dance day, today's lessons were cut back tremendously because I knew all three kids would pass out right after lunch. So I set up shop on the outside patio table where we did lessons outside in the beautiful 68 degree weather!

We managed to get in two Math lessons, where Babe practiced writing her number five as well as spelling out. She also did well on a mini spelling bee where I called out a number and asked her to spell it. She kept getting caught on "four", spelling it "for." But all the other numbers she got correct! After completing all the worksheets (seriously, doubling up Math lessons means six worksheets to complete!), we had a quick discussion about good posture and behavior while sitting at the computer.

I had Babe sit at the computer and show me what good posture meant. I had to explain to her what posture actually was, but once I did, she understood that it basically meant no feet on the desk ("like that man sits at his desk in 'Space Buddies.'" Where does she remember this stuff?), no food or drink, able to see the monitor and reach the mouse and keyboard. Then I showed her the computer lab worksheet where she picked out the three misbehaving kids immediately.

Then we called it a day. I think Babe appreciated the short day. But back to normal tomorrow!