Thursday November 20, 2003

We spent a lot of time on school today. I think it took us longer because we took frequent breaks. I find Reagan's easier to work with that way.

It was Matthew Chapter 14 today. His bible verse was from chapter 13. His faith summary from his religious ed. class was about us being imperfect, but God sending us his Son anyway. I really like our faith work. I think it's good for the both of us, and it's giving him a solid base.

He fixed sentences for Language Arts, and wrote new sentences for Spelling. For Reading today he had free reading time where he read several of his favorite books.

Math was difficult today. We were talking about the relationships between numbers. I explained that equations are balanced, and that if a numeral goes up by one then the answer has to go up by one. At one time, I really thought that he was mathematically minded. As time goes on, I'm finding that to be less and less true. He seems to really enjoy reading more, and creative expression. I had him do a page of addition for practice. I don't think we'd have a really complete math curriculum if I didn't supplement with workbooks. Maybe next year I'll actually get him a math textbook. I find some of the homeschool math programs are just way too expensive for us. But maybe Abeka would work. I hear good things about it, and it's not overly priced.

For Science we talked about stems, and what kind of things are considered stems. We talked about the beanstalk in "Jack and the Beanstalk" and how it was a big stem. I compared stems to straws. I'd really like to do an experiment with celery and food coloring, but of course, I have neither at the moment.

We read from "Just So Stories" and we'll do more from the Magicians Nephew later.