Trying to make it all work
Yesterday was a really busy day. We are working on bones and the skeletal system right now for Science and Health. We are having fun with that, making pasta skeletons and reading fun books. We also started reading A Good Night for Ghosts, a Merlin story in the Magic Tree House series. I love those books and I'm glad that Dakota does now too. This one is all about New Orleans in the early 1900's and they go back to find a young Louis Armstrong and set him on the right path to becoming the King of Jazz. Not only was I able to pull a great music lesson out of there, introducing Dakota to both jazz and Armstrong, but we are also adding to our vocabulary with alot of words he is unfamiliar with from the time period like streetcars. He had no idea what they were until we saw some great drawings in the book.
Every kid has their hot button....the one that will make them do just about anything to receive it. For some kids it's M&Ms. For some it is a sticker. For Dakota, it's a strip of paper with a vocabulary word on it to put on his word wall. I print them out ahead of time, usually already pre-made by http://www.edhelper.com/, and we go through them before we read each day to see if we know any of the words or have learned them in our reading. When he can give me a good definition, I put two pieces of rolled tape on the back and he gets to put them on his wall. He LOVES this. He will turn himself inside out to get one! He tries to trick me as the day goes on, asking me "Hey, Mom. What is a document?" He listens closely to the story to hear the words and he points them out days later when he hears them. I love that he loves something so simple and wonderfully educational!
We sat outside at our deck table doing our workbook pages and spelling and got in just about everything except history and spanish. After school time he got to go outside for a little while and play with the neighbors and then we headed to the middle school about a mile from here to test out wrestling and see if he liked it. I am NOT a fan of the sport, but my daughter is and my son in law used to wrestle. All three of us were there for him and wouldn't you know, he loved it. Today I took him to get his wrestling shoes, bright blue and $50 and then tonight, at Cub Scouts, I realized that we have scouts on the same night that wrestling will soon be on. Great. Have to work that out. And basketball. Wants to play that too. Sigh. Just when I was starting to enjoy the downtime it has taken off again with a flash.
Every kid has their hot button....the one that will make them do just about anything to receive it. For some kids it's M&Ms. For some it is a sticker. For Dakota, it's a strip of paper with a vocabulary word on it to put on his word wall. I print them out ahead of time, usually already pre-made by http://www.edhelper.com/, and we go through them before we read each day to see if we know any of the words or have learned them in our reading. When he can give me a good definition, I put two pieces of rolled tape on the back and he gets to put them on his wall. He LOVES this. He will turn himself inside out to get one! He tries to trick me as the day goes on, asking me "Hey, Mom. What is a document?" He listens closely to the story to hear the words and he points them out days later when he hears them. I love that he loves something so simple and wonderfully educational!
We sat outside at our deck table doing our workbook pages and spelling and got in just about everything except history and spanish. After school time he got to go outside for a little while and play with the neighbors and then we headed to the middle school about a mile from here to test out wrestling and see if he liked it. I am NOT a fan of the sport, but my daughter is and my son in law used to wrestle. All three of us were there for him and wouldn't you know, he loved it. Today I took him to get his wrestling shoes, bright blue and $50 and then tonight, at Cub Scouts, I realized that we have scouts on the same night that wrestling will soon be on. Great. Have to work that out. And basketball. Wants to play that too. Sigh. Just when I was starting to enjoy the downtime it has taken off again with a flash.
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