so I will start out by saying first my daughter is not a morning person at all. she loves her sleep, so much so that during her toddler years she would actually say - I'm tired - and proceed to lay herself down for a nap.
she is the cuddly, cozy type. stare out the window, sucking the thumb, and lay rolled up in a blanket as we say 'like a burrito' this is also known as the big girl swaddle :) one of the many advantages to schooling at home is that I don't have to deal with the stress of getting her up at dawn each morning, have her quickly gobble up a hopefully healthy and hearty breakfast and shuffle her out the door because she has to get somewhere on time.
we are on our own time.
I can give her the space of easing softly into the day with as little anxiety as possible. I am very much morning person and this has made for some very interesting conflicts between us in the past but i have since learned that she is not me and I am not her. I learn this daily..... but i digress
so this blog is all about our schooling process, maybe folks will find it interesting or silly or pure genius or not it doesn't matter it works for us. we are both learning constantly. its a lot of fun.
I make sure she gets at least ten hours sleep & then wake her up as gently as i can . if i didnt she could sleep for so much longer. I have come to terms with the fact that there are some people who really like to sleep a lot. she is a card carrying member of the somnambulist society. I am not one of those types lol although I aim to be one day .
today
we always do mathematics first thing in the morning, whether it a game or a drill or working with manipulatives, place value or money. It's very important to me that she is good with numbers and not intimidated by them. also I know that she has this love/hate relationship with mathematical concepts. The exactness annoys her so I always in the morning during breakfast or right after lets do some mathematics so that we can say we did it and also because the more we do it the easier it gets.
This morning we did multiplication & division and chatted about how they are the opposite of each other. while i made brinner (dinner for breakfast) she sat in her pajamas in the rocking chair and answered my questions. she counted in multiples of 6 7 and 8, then i asked her division questions that correlated to the answers she came up with, for instance 48 divided by 8 is equal to what? 63 divided by 9 is equal to what? she like doing math in her head and was coming up with the answers with confidence. I could tell she was feeling awesome as opposed to overwhelmed, this pleased me greatly. we talked a bit more about mathematics and how its all about taking it step by step and remembering that its all about having a clear understanding of value of each number you are dealing with, mastering place value and being clear of what steps you need to take to solve the equation. once you breathe and take note oof these facts you are golden.
a little more math talk and it was time to hit it, we had tickets to a show at the new victory theater courtesy of our friend dumeha who is a teaching artist there. the new vic is this super cool space where they have family friendly shows that are often conecptually interesting, fun and educatinal. they sometimes have a leson p;lanms attached and auntie dumeha is one of the creatives that put them toigewther and also make them happen.
on the way their via subway we did some language arts also known as reading and then talking about what we read some essays on United states history, health, culture, geography. picked part crtain ideas, pointed out new words and used them in a sentence. she has that linguistic inteelehence so this is something she enjoys. In the back of my mind while we were talking about washington d.c. I decided we should take a bus ride to there an extended field trip where we catch all the national monuments and tour the white house. probably for MLK week. it would be a nice way to honor his legacy to visit where the i have a dream speech happened.
the show was in my eyes just okay but she enjoyed it, a journey into movement with ideas that played with how sounds & time connect to make rhythm.
after the show we had errands to run, bank, supermarket, etc. then home. while I taught my yoga class she chilled and munched on some wraps filled with turkey, cheese, apple & baby greens.
afte yoga we did a whole bunch of science experiments using her Halloween candy, we melted chocolate to see how the molecules dissolved and separate from teh heat and then froze it again. we added baking soda to sweet tarts to test for acidity the bubbles were not as intense as we hoped. we then made ice water and also boiled water and put the same type of candy in each cup to test how the water temperature affects how fast teh same item would dissolve, the candy in the hot watter took about 5 seconds to dissipate. we also cooked twizzlers they didnt melt or change shape in any way they just turned black from the heat we both thought that was intersitng and we also melted some chewy candy to test it for oil it looked and felt like wax when he melted then we we froze it and it was very shiny. i was going to throw everything out but she insisted on keeping them in the same condition to stare at and look at for awhile and I gave her the space to do that cause truth be told they all did look quite fascinating the chocolate was weird shades of grayish brown with craters and valleys. the pink & purple chewy candy was a puddle of gooey swirly pretty fun and teh twizzlers just looked like licorice :)
we talked for a while about all teh various things we discovered then I told her it was time to get ready for bed, she washed up, brushed teeth put on pajamas and voila ready for bed. i gave her the choice of reading a chapter novel or doing some drawing in hersketchbook.
she chose her sketch book and did some drawing I thought this would be a nice way to wind down from the excitement because all teh experiments had her very hyped up!
she thanked me for letting her draw a bit instead of going right to bed and eventually fall asleep.
looking forward to another exciting day tomorrow
