Thursday, February 26, 2004
Well, in the last few days, Sophie's finished the first Harry Potter book and read the first two chapters of the second book. We've also finished reading The BFG, so we're going to start our next read-aloud book : The Magic Grandfather. I picked this one because I remember enjoying it as a child; however I don't know what I'll think of it as an adult, or how Sophie will enjoy it. If it's not a hit, we'll just ditch it. The beauty of not being tied to a curriculum.
As far as writing goes, she seems to have got over her brief hatred of writing, and has written a few more "Sophie L" stories : Sophie L. and the Gerbil, and Sophie L. and the Broken Leg. She seems to draw pretty heavily from life ;-)
She can tell the time, and we're playing around with some new math concepts : division and multiplication.
Tomorrow is the first meeting of a Waldorf-inspired co-op our homeschool group is putting together. Should be fun.
As far as writing goes, she seems to have got over her brief hatred of writing, and has written a few more "Sophie L" stories : Sophie L. and the Gerbil, and Sophie L. and the Broken Leg. She seems to draw pretty heavily from life ;-)
She can tell the time, and we're playing around with some new math concepts : division and multiplication.
Tomorrow is the first meeting of a Waldorf-inspired co-op our homeschool group is putting together. Should be fun.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Recent activities :
Inspired by Harry Potter, I read her the witches' chant from Macbeth - just the first couple of stanzas, the third one gets way too icky - and she made up her own spell as follows :
Bubble bubble cauldron bern
make that into a nasty jerm
turn the world into it
and make it chern
Rather apocalyptic, I thought. Guess we need to work on different spellings for the "er" sound!
I also showed her how to use lemon juice for invisible ink and explained why it worked. That was pretty cool, although a six year old, a piece of paper and a hot-plate are a rather scary combination. Calls for close, close supervision.
Here is the note she wrote to me in invisible ink :
Top Secret!
Danger!
Beast has been freed so beware and on the lookout.
The End.
In math, we started talking about probability, and we played a few games that helped illustrate the concept.
Reading : we're still working through the BFG and Harry Potter. Sophie's loving them both.
Inspired by Harry Potter, I read her the witches' chant from Macbeth - just the first couple of stanzas, the third one gets way too icky - and she made up her own spell as follows :
Bubble bubble cauldron bern
make that into a nasty jerm
turn the world into it
and make it chern
Rather apocalyptic, I thought. Guess we need to work on different spellings for the "er" sound!
I also showed her how to use lemon juice for invisible ink and explained why it worked. That was pretty cool, although a six year old, a piece of paper and a hot-plate are a rather scary combination. Calls for close, close supervision.
Here is the note she wrote to me in invisible ink :
Top Secret!
Danger!
Beast has been freed so beware and on the lookout.
The End.
In math, we started talking about probability, and we played a few games that helped illustrate the concept.
Reading : we're still working through the BFG and Harry Potter. Sophie's loving them both.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Today's learning :
Sophie read some more of Harry Potter, and then made chocolate frogs, a la Hogwarts. She enjoyed the making and is very pleased with her efforts. But they taste foul (as one would guess by looking at the recipe.) None of the rest of us like them but we don't want to admit it for fear of hurting her feelings.
She took a picture of Julius (our new baby gerbil), printed it out and thought of all the adjectives she could use to describe him. She loved this.
She learned about salivary glands, and did an experiment to see how her body reacts when it thinks it's getting yummy food. For the curious : open your mouth, breathe through your nose, and time how long it takes for you to drool. Then, have someone put your favourite snack in front of you and repeat the experiment. You'll see that your salivary glands kick into action, ready to get that food good and mushy. She loved this too.
And I read her the next few chapters of The BFG. She doesn't remember, but she heard this story back when she was a toddler - I remember reading it to Steve and Emmy when she was about 18 months old. She actually seemed to quite enjoy it back then, five years ago - I'm sure hearing "Sophie" so often during the story must have helped.
Sophie read some more of Harry Potter, and then made chocolate frogs, a la Hogwarts. She enjoyed the making and is very pleased with her efforts. But they taste foul (as one would guess by looking at the recipe.) None of the rest of us like them but we don't want to admit it for fear of hurting her feelings.
She took a picture of Julius (our new baby gerbil), printed it out and thought of all the adjectives she could use to describe him. She loved this.
She learned about salivary glands, and did an experiment to see how her body reacts when it thinks it's getting yummy food. For the curious : open your mouth, breathe through your nose, and time how long it takes for you to drool. Then, have someone put your favourite snack in front of you and repeat the experiment. You'll see that your salivary glands kick into action, ready to get that food good and mushy. She loved this too.
And I read her the next few chapters of The BFG. She doesn't remember, but she heard this story back when she was a toddler - I remember reading it to Steve and Emmy when she was about 18 months old. She actually seemed to quite enjoy it back then, five years ago - I'm sure hearing "Sophie" so often during the story must have helped.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Sophie's high point of the day : making "frobscottle", complete with illustrated label, and serving it to the family with dinner. (You need to read The BFG to find out the magical effect of frobscottle.)
She also enjoyed painting a picture of Harry Potter astride his broomstick.
Aside from that, we attempted this sort-of lava lamp, but it was a dismal failure, I think because there was still some detergent left inside the jar, from where I'd washed it. We'll try again tomorrow.
We need some more math games I think : we play the fraction game and countdown almost every day, and, even though Sophs isn't bored with them, I am! Countdown really is good - she started off just adding and subtracting, but she's moving to using division and multiplication as well these days.
She also enjoyed painting a picture of Harry Potter astride his broomstick.
Aside from that, we attempted this sort-of lava lamp, but it was a dismal failure, I think because there was still some detergent left inside the jar, from where I'd washed it. We'll try again tomorrow.
We need some more math games I think : we play the fraction game and countdown almost every day, and, even though Sophs isn't bored with them, I am! Countdown really is good - she started off just adding and subtracting, but she's moving to using division and multiplication as well these days.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
I'm thrilled - Sophie's reading the first Harry Potter book all by herself! She's up to chapter five, and is curled up in our bed with it right now - "just a few more pages before I go to sleep, mom!". That point where reading really "clicks" and the child just takes off always amazes me.
She had asked to read Harry Potter a few weeks ago, but got disheartened by the small print when she tried. I was in Borders the other day and stumbled across a large-print paperback edition, so I bought that for her - and she loved it. It's exactly what she needed to make the book accessible. Unfortunately, it's the American edition, so they've changed some of the words - Harry has bangs, for instance, instead of a fringe - but that's not the end of the world.
Aside from reading - as I mentioned, she's reading Harry Potter, and I'm reading the BFG to her - we learned about gerbils today (Emily's adopting one tomorrow), she wrote a short story (I was surprised by this, as she's been resisting writing recently), and we played "fraction bingo". Interestingly, her grip on the concepts of half, three-quarters etc wasn't quite as firm as I'd thought - just shows we need to explore important concepts through many, many media.
She had asked to read Harry Potter a few weeks ago, but got disheartened by the small print when she tried. I was in Borders the other day and stumbled across a large-print paperback edition, so I bought that for her - and she loved it. It's exactly what she needed to make the book accessible. Unfortunately, it's the American edition, so they've changed some of the words - Harry has bangs, for instance, instead of a fringe - but that's not the end of the world.
Aside from reading - as I mentioned, she's reading Harry Potter, and I'm reading the BFG to her - we learned about gerbils today (Emily's adopting one tomorrow), she wrote a short story (I was surprised by this, as she's been resisting writing recently), and we played "fraction bingo". Interestingly, her grip on the concepts of half, three-quarters etc wasn't quite as firm as I'd thought - just shows we need to explore important concepts through many, many media.
Monday, February 09, 2004
What we did today :
Made a twister in a jar (because she read a Magic Tree House book about twisters).
Read some library books about twisters.
She wrote down the 10 things she liked best about The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.
And read the first two chapters of the first Harry Potter book to me. It's funny, as a kid I loathed reading aloud, but she loves it.
We also played Cranium Cadoo.
And Countdown.
And she did some math worksheets involving graphing.
And that was about it!
Made a twister in a jar (because she read a Magic Tree House book about twisters).
Read some library books about twisters.
She wrote down the 10 things she liked best about The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.
And read the first two chapters of the first Harry Potter book to me. It's funny, as a kid I loathed reading aloud, but she loves it.
We also played Cranium Cadoo.
And Countdown.
And she did some math worksheets involving graphing.
And that was about it!
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Sophie's reading a "Magic Tree House" book a day at the moment. She loves the fact that she can just whizz through them; it gives her a great sense of accomplishment. She read the Amazon one yesterday, so today we did some research about the Amazon : where exactly it is (her geography is pretty shaky), animals, plants, conservation issues ... among other things, she now she understands why we buy the eco-friendly fair-trade coffee from the church instead of the grocery store stuff. She learned a lot; we'll see how much she retained when she tells Bobby about her day this evening.
We also continued reading "The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles", we're almost done with it now. It's been a great read-aloud. And she did some math worksheets from one of the Scholastic workbooks that we bought last month. Oh, and we baked also baked milk tart ; the Brownies chose South Africa for their Thinking Day country, so I'm experimenting with S.A recipes, trying to find an easy one for the troop to make. All our activities today were chosen and initiated by Sophs; I love that she's so incredibly enthusiastic about life.
She had an extra Brownie meeting this afternoon : they did the "penny power" try-it, and she seemed to enjoy that. We leave for gymnastics in about one minute, and at 7pm we're climbing with the church outdoor group. She should sleep well tonight.
We also continued reading "The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles", we're almost done with it now. It's been a great read-aloud. And she did some math worksheets from one of the Scholastic workbooks that we bought last month. Oh, and we baked also baked milk tart ; the Brownies chose South Africa for their Thinking Day country, so I'm experimenting with S.A recipes, trying to find an easy one for the troop to make. All our activities today were chosen and initiated by Sophs; I love that she's so incredibly enthusiastic about life.
She had an extra Brownie meeting this afternoon : they did the "penny power" try-it, and she seemed to enjoy that. We leave for gymnastics in about one minute, and at 7pm we're climbing with the church outdoor group. She should sleep well tonight.
