Gavin had his first grade in cursive writing this morning and did very well.  He also learned the rule, 'when there is one vowel in a word it usually makes it's short sound, when there are two vowels in a word the first vowel makes it's long sound and the second one is silent.'  Then he practiced reading words - pal/pail, man/mane, cub/cube, etc.

In math he made a little graph with colored tiles. 

Then we reviewed place value by putting a number on the abacus and showing the corresponding place value cards.  Then we worked some more on adding 1 to numbers over 10.

For our Pilgrim lesson today we focused on Squanto.  I have a wonderful picture book biography of Squanto that talks about how he was kidnapped and sold into slavery and the whole story on how he came to help the Pilgrims.  Then Austin joined us for a Squanto craft.  The boys colored two fish, glued some sunflower seeds (I didn't have popcorn in the pantry so we took the sunflowers out of the bird food) onto their paper, glued the fish next to it, and surrounded it by dirt.  Austin got the seeds and fish on his paper but didn't stick around for the dirt part.  When Gavin was done he colored clouds, rain and lightening above his ground and little corn stalks sprouting from the rain.

Our artist this month is Michelangelo.  We have done nothing for the poor man but I do have some of his paintings on the wall.  I couldn't find a biography about him at the library either, although I could have gotten one on 50 Cent and two on Miley Cyrus (who is like 17, seriously?).  Anyway, it irritates me but I will move on.  So we talked about how he was known for his sculptures and paintings on ceilings.  Then we got out some modeling clay (super messy!) and he fashioned what is supposed to be a human scuplture.  Hopefully it will be dry by Friday so he can paint it.

In completely unrelated news, Monet has formed his (or her) chrysalis!

Here is the book we read about Squanto today.  We have officially read 100 books for Kindergarten!

Since we finished Pilgrim Boy we have moved on to Stories of the Pilgrims.

I had given Gavin the choice between 'Stories of the Pilgrims' and 'Stories of Colonial Children' (which is about Pilgrim children) and Gavin decided he wanted to read about Pilgrim children before bed (we finished Despereax last night) so we will start this book tomorrow night since he has Awanas tonight.  It's an old book so it doesn't look pretty but it has lots of great stories about the daily life of the children written in a story form so it should be good!