First grade curriculum. And stuff.

I'm antsy. Three posts in one day. I finished one work project tonight (take my word for it, flash drives are just about the most boring thing ever to write about... although, to be fair, not quite as boring as keyboards) and am not ready to continue with my next project until tomorrow (even though this is one of the ones that makes business writing drudgery worth it - scripting an internal commercial). Too jittery to sleep, too cold out to go for a walk.

Anyway.

I bought our first grade books today. Signed up for the three-month trial of Amazon Prime and got free two-day shipping. Now, I'll be honest, I don't even know what Amazon Prime is. Sounds like a Transformer native to South American tree canopies. I do know that I can opt out before they charge me $79, and I know that signing up got me free two-day shipping. I remember, back in college, leaving the campus bookstore with my bag bursting at the seams, filled with straws. Why straws? Because they were FREE. Tell me it's free and I'll sign up. Thank you very much.

So, by Tuesday we should have received, and paid NO (happy dance here) shipping for:



















That Usborne World History Encyclopedia makes me a bit nervous. Isabel's a sensitive kid and I suspect she's going to think that picture is scary. And the trouble with scary covers is that, unlike scary pictures inside the book, it can't just be paperclipped to another page. I may have to break out a paper grocery bag and fashion an old-school cover for that one. (I have a nostalgic urge to write "NKOTB 4eva!" on it.)

Cool site for classical music

ClassicCat

It's free. Yeah, baby. Free.

Thank you, ClassicCat, for saving me a small fortune. At a rate of one composer per week (this week was Bela Bartok, by the way), I figure ClassicCat is saving us a few hundred dollars a year. When something really catches our fancy, I buy it from iTunes (hello, Nutcracker!). Otherwise, I save the freebie link on my handy-dandy bookmarks page and we're good to go!

Better?

I think so. Yes?

Refresh. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

Okay. Not perfect, but good enough for me.

I've got to do something about the photos, though. Holy huge pictures.

Why my weblog looks like crap

Because I don't know how to work the damned templates. In real life, I'm busting out every variation of the "f" word you can imagine, and some that even sailors and truck drivers haven't thought up yet. Here, I'm being reserved and will instead say that I am most perturbed. MOST PERTURBED.

I hear that typepad is good blogging software...

Chinese New Year

This past week at co-op, we celebrated Chinese New Year. It was a great time - we ordered Chinese food and ate it off of authentic Chinese bowls, with chopsticks. Thanks to one mom whose brother lived in New York City's Chinatown years ago, we had many other authentic items as well - a child-sized kimono, a parasol, a tea set... There was an activity table with coloring pages and other games, and a display of the different animals used in Chinese years, with personality traits said to be associated with people born during each year. We made Chinese lanterns, read books and, finally, held a parade (several parades, actually, so that the kids could take turns with the different parade costumes).

There are, of course, pictures:

Farts are science.

No, really.

This week's science themes: reversible/irreversible change, and states of matter (gas/liquid/solid). We'll be finishing up tomorrow - we have a hunk of ice in the freezer that Isabel wants to put on the stove. This same water has been frozen and unfrozen, ad nauseam, this week, in order to discover whether the resulting changes were reversible or irreversible. We explored water as a solid and a liquid, leaving great, soggy messes in the dining room and requiring multiple wardrobe changes. We boiled water and watched the steam, and compared it to smoke from a flame. And it was during this conversation that Isabel shared her illuminating observation:

Me: Do you remember what makes steam?

I: Hot water turns into steam.

Me: That's right. When water gets hot enough, it becomes a gas.

I: Yeah. Like a fart!

Me: *chokes a little* Like a what?

I: Like a fart is gas!

Me: Er... yes, that's right.

I: And you can't see it and you can't touch it, but you sure can smell it and you sure can feel it, so you know it's there even if it's indvinzible!

2009

Resolution... update blog more often...

Outlook for the first half of 2009: transition to first grade curriculum sometime in the spring or, maybe, early summer. Depends on reading fluency.

In preparation for this transition, with the new year I've implemented a new, more in-depth and structured, homeschool routine. It looks like this:

Monday
Mathematics
Spelling
Grammar
Reading
Writing
History/Geography
Music Appreciation

Tuesday
Mathematics
Spelling
Reading
Writing
Science

Wednesday
Mathematics
Spelling
Grammar
Reading
Writing
History/Geography

Thursday
Mathematics
Spelling
Reading
Writing
Science

Friday
Spelling
Grammar
Reading
Oral Reading
History/Geography
Art Appreciation

Some of these subjects are still a bit nebulous, as we aren't actually working through our formal first grade material right now... History/Geography and Science, in particular, are currently offshoots of other material (as an example, this week's Geography lessons consisted of finding Russia and Pennsylvania on a map, related to Tchaikovsky and Cassatt, this week's composer and artist). Spelling is still very much a part of Reading and Writing, and Oral Reading is also part of Reading (like most beginning Readers, Isabel reads everything aloud).

So far the new routine is working well for us, though.

For winter/spring, we also have a host of activities:

Monday
Homeschool group
Irish Dancing

Wednesday
Homeschool group
First Communion class

Thursday
Science Museum group

Friday
Gymnastics

Sunday
Irish Dancing

Add to this impromptu get-togethers with friends, and probably guitar lessons. Isabel wants to take up the violin as well, which we're considering.