December 9, 2008

FIAR: J

Read The Clown of God retold by Tomie DePaola. I think this book on one hand is a little disturbing... J thought so, too. But on the last page he said, "ohhhh... well that's nice." So I guess you could say it ends well... but still really weird.

Social Studies Day

Geography - found and marked Italy on world map.

Language - talked about some of the Italian words that were used in the story and what they mean. (Arrivederci, Grazie, Signor, Fine). Jo noticed that a lot of them sounded like Spanish words from Dora. What a smartie!

Orphans - talked about what an orphan is. J did not seem interested in going into this at all.

Elderly - talked about how sometimes elderly people aren't shown respect by younger generations. Talked about how elderly people are to be respected and we should always do what we can to help and encourage them to show them they still have worth. Talked about ways we could do that.

Thankfulness - talked about how in the beginning of the story and at the end of the story, Giovanni had nowhere to sleep and had to beg for his food and his clothes were rags. Talked about always being thankful for the things we have and listed some of what these things were.

Difficult people - Discussed the part of the book where Giovanni is attacked by the crowd for not putting on a good performance because some people only care about their own entertainment. Noted that we always need to not only care about the performance, but the performER, and J said he would have encouraged him to not give up and to keep trying =)

Occupations - J loved this discussion. Talked about occupations people have and how they can help other people. I listed a few and talked about how they help people (cooks, paperboys, doctors), and then J ran with that and named about 100 more and they were all very good! Told him to keep these things in mind when he gets older and chooses an occupation for himself.

Brain Quest: J

pgs 38-41 - spelling; numerical order; grouping; history; food; math (tens and ones); nouns and verbs; opposites; money; nature; fairy tale identification

Math: J

SSM Workbook pgs 84-85 - addition; subtraction; completing and reading a graph - did AWESOME! As usual. =)

Reading: P

Completed lesson 25 of 100EL -had great difficulty today with answering questions about the story after it was read. I got a little heated because I though he should be doing better and the poor kid started crying. What a bad Mommy =( I apologized and asked if we could start over. He still had difficulty but we were both able to keep our cool and get through it. Onto 26 tomorrow.