On a lighter note, remember these?
I had to grab a photo because of the nostalgia they bring. I can still feel the extreme stickiness between my teeth, and recall with fondness the iridescence of the hard candy coating. These, however....
...always were kinda gross. Did you like them? The ones in this bag were starting to harden. Still reminds me of days gone by, although not with the excitement of the peanut butter candies.
My daughter and I started something new today, an obvious solution for reading a book that seems "too long." The issue was that she was able to read most of the words, but the length of the story as well as some paragraphs was daunting, causing her to quit before she even started. Last night, she attempted the book before bed, and called me in, disappointed that it was too overwhelming. She wanted to read it, but was intimidated. I'm glad we slept on it and decided to wait till morning to tackle it. Here's what we did:
While the two of us were in the kitchen before her sister was up, I asked my girl to go pick out one of the books "from last night" for us to look at. This is the one she chose:
She immediately opened it and started reading, with medium fluency. After the first page, though, I realized that it might help her along if I took over some of the sentences. It got to where I read half the page, then she'd jump back in and finish it. Here's an example:
I love this book for reading practice because it is full of words to decode, as well as sight words. We made it through the book with no stomps, no frustration, but with much laughter and satisfaction, plus a huge sense of accomplishment on her part. I'm grateful for her to see that longer books are possible; another suggestion is to simply read a page or two at a time, then come back to it later. As Charlotte Mason says, reading (and everything) is more beneficial in small chunks, without hurrying, to aid the digestion of ideas.
We did nature study today during school. You may have heard me mention before that this simply involves going into your own yard and finding something in nature to observe and draw in a nature notebook. My girls have their own notebooks, but I do mine in my journal. Here's what I captured today:
The girls asked if they could do rocks, and I said of course. Who knew that two smooth, fairly plain rocks would provide such joy? Finding, drawing, painting, and writing about these rocks turned into naming them, then dressing and making rooms for them out of boxes. As I type, two children are sitting in the floor, taping together cardboard beds, and sewing pillows and "bedspreads" out of scrap material for their rocks. What a thrill to observe the unpolluted innocence of childhood, to watch ideas and creativity unfold. They didn't want to finish their lunches, they were too excited to get back to designing their rock homes.
Finally, I just have to post this delightful illustration from The Real Mother Goose, along with its poem that we read earlier:
CURLY-LOCKS
Curly-locks, Curly-locks, wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine;
But sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam
And feed upon strawberries, sugar, and cream.
Until next time!
