So far, so good

We've had a fabulous week. Activities included homeschool coop, making paper lanterns, singing seasonal and lantern songs, seeing friends, designing games, painting and movement at a friend's house, sewing some of these, and, unexpectedly, finishing up our first Math Main Lesson Book for the year. I think taking away the pressure to follow my lead for 2 hours in the morning has really opened up a space for Oldest, where we can be together and do meaningful work. This evening, we had friends stopping by on their travels, and Oldest even got out her recorder for them. It was good practice for her, and our friends were so nice to indulge her by listening to several songs in a row. We also got a story in (completely unplanned), when she asked why the pine trees do not loose their needles in the winter. There is a lovely Cherokee tale on this, which I told her during a car ride.

The challenge for me is that I operate best with a plan. If I don't write things down, I simply forget them. So I came up with a system where I keep a calendar page in my planner on which I block out the chunks of time during which I can focus my whole attention on Oldest. Underneath the calendar, I keep a list of activities that I would like to do. These include a story, ideas for crafts and painting or form drawing, etc. Then I try to see where on my calendar we have time for any of it. When the time comes, I suggest an activity, and usually, Oldest thinks it's a great idea. We'll see how she responds to me wanting to do Form Drawing on Tuesday. I may just have to get my book out and start working on it for myself, hoping that she will want to try a form or two.

Here are some pictures from her Math book. We use the names of the math gnomes from Enki and worked with some of the stories from Donna Simmons' First Grade Curriculum.

This is the title page.

My favorite: the green people are goblins wo can't wait to eat their dumplings.
Oldest loves her free drawing of the princess in King Turnip Counter best.