Friday

I seem to be a day late this week! It has been warmer this week so we have been trying to get outside as much as possible.  Austin is really enjoying the vehicles around the house this week.

And, I think Austin may be the only one-year-old who knows the word 'knight' and knows what a knight is...not the textbook definition of course but he can identify both knights and their gear and he knows what to do with them.  He really likes to play knights with Gavin which makes Gavin very happy.

This week we learned about feathers and beaks and wings.  We have been reading two or three chapters a day in our Burgess book and we are still enjoying it.

We read about beaks and wings in our Nature Reader (each animal is broken into different topics so it's easy to just read what you need to know at the moment.  We read the feathers section the other day so we read beaks and wings section.).

We looked at pictures of different beaks and wings in our Eyewitness Book.

We started learning about songbirds on Friday.  This is a really nice book that just has two or three pages devoted to about a dozen different birds.  We read the mockingbird section yesterday.

And we read these books for fun!

More Valentine's

Today Gavin and Austin got a Valentine from Grandpa Ben and Grandma Sue and it was very exciting!

And we finished the George Washington chapter book we have been reading (it's taken us about two weeks!)  So today we started a chapter book about Theodore Roosevelt.  I can't find a picture because it was written in 1978, it's going to go along a lot faster the Washington did though, and we read this book about knights.



Books and Poems

I don't know why but the last couple of days I have been thinking that I should post the books and poems we are reading/learning on the blog.  We just finished King Arthur last night.  Gavin loved it!  He seemed to follow it fairly easily once we got past the first couple chapters and he got used to the flow of the story.  His favorite part (according to what he's telling me right now) was when Arthur was fighting against the black knight although the black knight was just a little bit scary.  He was disappointed that Arthur was kind of mean at the end because he was fighting Sir Lancelot instead of forgiving him.

While the boys eat I usually read them poems and then read from a chapter book.  Gavin just memorized the following poem:

The Bunny

by Adelaide Love

I saw a small brown bunny run

Across the winter snow

And wondered where he lived and why

He had to hurry so.

Perhaps he had stayed out to long

And Mother Bunny'd scold;

Perhaps he hurried home because

His little feet were cold.

We also almost have memorized Robert Louis Stevenson's Picture Books In Winter, which is too long for me to copy but Gavin likes that one too.  If you really want to read it you can find it at this link:

http://www.lone-star.net/mall/literature/rls/PicturebooksinWinter.htm

Now we are working on this poem:

The Arrow and the Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to the earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to the earth, I knew now where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

After we have read our poems, which I try to get done at breakfast but that doesn't always happen (I have to get better with routines) then we read a book at lunch.  Right now we are reading this chapter book about George Washington.  It has a a fairly advanced vocabulary for him, but again, he seems to be following it okay.

In the last week we have also read:

  That's all I can think of right now.  Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone is interested in what exactly we are reading at the moment but thought I'd throw it out there.  Gavin is still reading Dick and Jane books and he read Green Eggs and Ham all by himself last week too!



Our Day

So we didn't do any special crafts or anything today but I thought I'd just post some pictures of things we do (or at least try to do) every day. 

Gavin and I read from a Bible Study book.  Right now we are using the book 'Big Truths for Little Kids'.  This book incorporates some catechism questions and he seems to like the question and answer format.  Then he works on his sight words.  Right now they are all knight related: knight, squire, king, prince, princess, sword, mace, queen, lance and horse so far.  We add four or five each week. 

Then he reads Dick and Jane.  This is actually reads, not pretends to read.  Usually I sit next to him and he reads it to me but I told him to pretend to read so I could take his picture...thus the goofy face!

At some point he practices violin.  He isn't playing yet just plucking the strings, learning the names of the strings and how to read music.

Austin, as always, spends lots of time reading.  Now that he is learning so many new words he likes to look through his books and point and objects and say their name.

Gavin and I are reading about presidents in honor of President's Day.  So far we've read about George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and John Adams.  Gavin loves to read biographies!  We read three books about George Washington today!

Here's the boys 'reading' some more.  This is very common in our house.

Austin spent quite a while playing with his Noah's Ark today.  He took all the animals out and sorted and rearranged them on the deck until they were in the perfect location.

Gavin played the bird matching game.  Usually I play with him but since we played yesterday I opted out today.  He had fun doing it himself anyway.

Here's Austin just before bed running around in a fireman hat.