Pretty Good Day - again!
Today has been a pretty OK day again - the odd glich here and there and there have been a few priviledges stopped, but on the whole it's been a peaceful working environment - no tantrums or excessive stresses 
!
We started the day in the usual way and Joel did some fabulous handwriting - then said he was going to do everything in his 'best writing' today and hence forth seemed to attempt to do so, which was nice. He seems to suddenly be getting 'proud' of his writing - in the right sense.
Maths was a doddle. Joel finished Singapore 1B a while back and is now using EMC Daily Maths Practice and Daily Word Problems (Grade 1) They are supposed to do a problem a day, but Joel does a week a day - meaning he should complete the books in about 36 days (as opposed to 36 weeks). On the whole Gr.1 is well below his level (being that Sing' 1A is designed for Gr.2) - hence doing a week a day, but it is useful review and there are a few 'concepts' in there that are new & challenge him - like naming patterns (ABAB, AABAAB, etc...) and some logic problems. He seems to really like the books and especially the fact that he gets to mark his own in the DMP book.
Jake has just about finished the first half of the CGP Yr3 book (will do on Thursday in fact - perfect timing!) meaning that we have 3B to do after half term. A whole year covered in a term 
- that's good going and not really a challenge to him either - just maths-fun, when he concentrates & allows it to be!
English was easy today too - phew! Jacob still hasn't done yesterday's quick write, but I've let them go play for now. There's still time before tea - if I can face it!! Today I decided to attempt to write a poem with Jacob. I got him to think of a word - any word - and he came up with "bike". He then had to make a list of as many words as he could that rhymed with bike. Collectively we could only think of seven, which was quite limiting, but still... Then I asked him to write a poem, each line ending in one of those words. I told him not to worry about the meter (rythmn), but he could try to think about it if he wanted to. I told him he could have one verse with six lines, two verses of 3 lines, or three verses of 2 lines. He understood and - with a little help from a friend (
) he came up with this;
I was riding my bike,
Holding a pike,
With a very long spike!
My brother Mike,
Was riding his trike,
He took a hike!
I didn't think that was too bad for a first attempt 
. I'm still waiting for the accompanying picture though.
I had an ante-natal at lunchtime, which was fine and got me a walk and a breath of fresh-air. All is well. Baby's head is still 'free' but that's not unusual for me - will be til' I go into labour if my past history is anything to go by.
Then after lunch we did Egyptian architecture and Pyramids (how they were built), which basically involved making a couple of little mini-books and whole lot of sticking and glueing. Jake also did a little Egyptian hieroglyphic maths - which he seemed to quite enjoy too.
We were all done by 3.30pm - save for their reading which they have now done too.
I LOVE it when a plan works as it should - why can't every day be like this?
BTW - THIS is a fantastic resource site - especially for any 'lapbookers' out there, but also I am simply in love with their stuff
