Friday, July 21, 2006

Grits: The New Brain Food?

So, I got up yesterday morning and tried to decide how to follow up Wednesday morning's magic lesson on making shiny pennies with nothing more than lemon juice and water. How do I capture their attention this morning? My mind blanked. I shrugged my shoulders and figured that this morning we would just have to drudge through it.

Breakfast - I needed to finish off the package of sausage links we had opened earlier in the week, but did not want pancakes again. Instead of standing in the kitchen asking: who wants cold cereal? who wants a frozen waffle? etc. I began fixing sausages and scrambled eggs. Then MB asked if we could have some cheesy grits, something I normally reserve for winter mornings. Sure - why not.
A lovely breakfast, with all of us actually sitting at the table at the same time! It was a nice way to start an unexceptional day.

School didn't begin until after lunch, but when it did - gracious.

K went first with her OPGTR lesson, while MB played on the computer. (note to self: remember to have MB in separate room when working with K) Thanks to Leapfrog and Leapster K knows the sounds of her letters. She is very excited about learning right now. It was about a 10 minute lesson, then we moved over to a quick math lesson. Then she wanted to write her letters on the whiteboard - which entertained her while MB and I got started.

Latin: We started Lesson 1 on Monday, but had not done much of anything with it since. I figured we would start back over. But, MB wanted to do the review questions first. Yeah - she remembered it. The entire lesson! She wanted to do all the writing. We had a lot of fun - people are right Latin is fun.

Math: Thursday was a Horizons day. I pulled out some of our Rightstart manipulatives and we had a great time with the clock - trying to get her to remember when drawing where to draw the big vs little hand. Then she flew through the rest of the lesson, while I prepared some math for our mobile school today.

Reading: Normally the point in our day when things start to go downhill. Generally, because of MB's tendancy to get very tired while reading we struggle to get through 5 pages. We made it through the 1st story with MB doing much, much better than usually. Then - she wanted to read another. Two stories in one day out of her primer. I am doing my mental happy dance. Yes, towards the end of the 2nd story (about 12 pages) some of her 'normal' mistakes started popping up again - but she read more than twice of what she is normally able to do!

Science - we finished the day reading and answering questions on Mercury. While I read and asked questions MB and K drew pictures - whatever I didn't care, as long as they were in the room and quiet. Both were able to answer questions and MB drew a most awesome picture of the solar system - as if you were in a spaceship beyond Pluto looking back. I wish my scanner had not died as it would be a wonderful picture to brag about.

It was a good 'brain' day!! Maybe grits should become a more normal part of our breakfast.

Unfortunately, when MB got back from her evening ou with daddy she was running a fever and complaining about a headache. I am hoping when she wakes up this morning she will feel well enough for us to head for the mountains today.

Peace,

Amy

1 comment:

Andrew McAllister said...

I was pseudo-randomly searching for family and relationship blogs that might be similar to mine when I ran across your thoughts on having a 'good brain day.' I think most of us would eat just about anything if we could guarantee ourselves one of those :o)

A family of six living and learning. You might catch us outside in the mud or working on crafts. We always seem to be on the go, come on and join us.