Career and Frog Day

Today's themes were careers and frogs. An odd combination I know. Ciaran, as many of you know is obsessed with frogs, and wakes up every day asking if today can be frog day. I decided while I will wait for a full blown frog day until F week I need to feed his interest now. So we started with two nonfiction books on frogs and they really hold his attention - he can name them and tell you the differences between a variety of frogs and toads. We went for a frog hunt but did not find any. We talked about how they will hibernate like bears (continuing yesterday's lesson) and he was very unhappy about that. On our frog hunt we kept a list of C words we saw, from that list: canoe, crabapple tree, crickets, crooked sign, cold, children, crack, creek, Cheney (as in Bush Cheney sign Rhia pointed out), chair, can, car and carraige. We made different frog sounds and calls and he had some coloring sheets.

This afternoon we started talking about C. I started with the theme of careers because I found several short books about different jobs that start with C. We began by showing them all the book covers and telling them they were related to careers and asking what they thought that meant. Rhia said "It is something you do" and then we talked about work/jobs and careers. We started naming some different careers and talked about computer programming (Serona's field and Ciaran's C vocab word). Then I read books about cowboys, custodians, cooks/chefs, cashiers and carpenters. From other books we read we also talked about president, Secretary of State (Colin Powell), heptologists (frogs), composer (bach, beethoven), artist (Cassat). We ended by talking about what they might want to do. Ciaran picked heptologist (surprised anyone?) and Rhia said a chef.

Ciaran took a nap and Rhia had quiet time and then finished her daily lessons. We also started working on the Homeschoolers for Bush unit study. For copywork today she began writing George Washington's "Rules for Civility" (we will try to write one a day until the election as part of the hs4bush study)and we talked about who we call to make sure they are registered to vote and how we can help people register to vote.

Rhia and I also worked on archaelogy today and collected various items to bury for our archaeological dig that might help someone understand our culture if they found them. Serona and I will bury them in the sandbox so they can excavate them tommorrow. It was fun to have her help pick what would represent our culture and it will be interesting to see how she does with the excavation proccess.

Been keeping up in Phonics Pathways, Miquon math, Story of the World and First Language lessons, bible memorization and our other usuals. Today's language lesson was fun - it was narration from a picture and then a review of proper and common nouns. She is really gettting much better about using complete sentences in her narrations. At the wedding she received a compliment on how well she always speaks in full sentences.

Off to clean and make dinner. Peace,
Tenn