I can't ask for anything more

I always have this feeling on contentment when we have a good day homeschooling.

Today was a book work day.

We did a page in our listening skills book. I asked a number of questions and the lad had to figure out what animal I might be talking about and then needed to locate said animal on a page. He did really well on this though one picture had him stumped for a while.

We then worked on The complete book of numbers and counting. We are continuing to figure out skip counting by 2's and 5's. Good to make his brain think a bit.

We did some work in Connect with words. we did work on nouns, and looked at words for North America. This involved getting out the globe so we could see for ourselves if what they were telling us was accurate.

First Grade Fundamentals was out next book to tackle. beginning sounds and ending sounds. I found it interesting that he sometimes forgets what ending sounds are and listens for the middle sound. Not quite sure what to do about that. Will need to think and ponder on it some.

Our next book was daily smart. here we worked on various math equations. Learning that horizontal and vertical math is the same thing. Starting to understand word problems and how to write them down.

and finished off our book work with a couple lessons from First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise. I have to admit, I find this book incredibly slow moving. It's like how many times do we have to review what a noun is? how many times do we have to go back to the same simple poem? Mind we have the first edition and perhaps they changed it in the second. But at this point I'm finding it a bit of a waste of time. THOUGH it is a good reminder to practice skills I just don't always do it the way I'm told to. :)

Then we looked a science book we had and I said "HEY.. why don't we make a collage?" At the start up we decided i would do one on mammals and the lad would do one on reptiles.. so I pulled out my picture file and this led to a TOTAL meltdown. With cries of "but mommy I can't decide what to do? There are too many interesting animals that God created! I don't know what to do!!!!" I tried to convince him he could do a page of reptiles and one of arachnids and such like...but no.. that would take too long. So then it's like Son.. this isn't worth a big fuss.. it's supposed to be fun! So why don't we do this because we homeschool which means we can change things around.. so why doesn't mommy sort things the way she likes.. into animal groups. And YOU sort they way you like? It's all sorting right? .. a tearful yes... and then smiles and happiness when mommy found a cool spider picture...and OH MOMMY I like this cat! Can he have his own page? Of course he can.. such a nice cat deserves his own page.

one of mommy's

one of the lad's

And then on and on and on went the chatter. Mommy.. God made a funny hamster.. see.. he's sneaking up on the spider..he's an arachnid you know. I would interject comments of .. hey son.. what is a walrus? are they fish or are they mammals or just what are they? so we'd take a moment and find out. And we figured out that fish are the class Chordata and Birds are Aves.. or Avian (depending on which source you look at). We had a HOOT and we learned and we talked and God was praised, and a little boy rejoiced in it all.

Most of what we did. :)

A homeschooling momma can't ask for anything more you know.

Homeschooling technically done for the day we went downstairs for lunch and to watch Seaquest. The lad's been working hard earning stickers and today as I was washing up the dishes I asked him....so.. how many groups of five do you have there? He counted.. FOUR! so how many big stickers does that get you.. FIVE! ah...So how many little ones do you have left.... only five little ones mommy.. I need two more! (he always has to have some spare as they get taken away for being unkind, not listening etc)

So.. since he hasn't chewed his finger nails OR toe nails.. he got his two more which set him up with enough stickers that he could 'purchase' something he's been wanting desperately for two weeks.... a science kit. So for the rest of the afternoon he did science. Learning to work a pipette, playing with test tubes, learning about colour cubes, making snow, making gooey crystals and such like. So much fun had by one small lad. It is so lovely to watch him learn and be excited.