Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Spanish

I regret that I don't have a camera right now. Some of the work Sean did today was very colorful and fun. When he was in school at the Montessori school he had Spanish class twice a week. He was there for three years, so he has been exposed to Spanish for a while.
Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in Spanish and my only class was in high school. I haven't worked with him at all on Spanish this year. But we have a book that his Nanna bought for him a few years ago called, "My first 100 Spanish Words." (I also regret that I don't have experience with Mandarin, and he took that class as an extra curricular class at the school.)
Yesterday we pulled out the Spanish words book and went through each page. The words are simple, and each page has a theme, such as The Beach, The Playground, Going to the Store, My Family, etc. At the back are lists of colors, numbers, days of the week, etc.
Today I wrote up some cards with the names of the colors on them, then pulled out items that were those colors and Sean placed the cards next to the appropriate colors. I forgot white, and when I came back into the room he had found a white envelope and had the work completed.
During our exercise yesterday I would say the day of the week in Spanish and he would tell me something special we do on each day. For example, Domingo is church day, Sabado is his favorite day because he is free to watch TV or do his work, whichever he chooses.
Today I made labels with the days of the week and he matched them to the control sheet.
His friend across the street is in public school, and comes to visit after school most days. I like to watch them interact when Sean has his work out. They enjoy talking about it, and today Sean gave the boy some new Spanish words.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Little bit of Bible, little bit of Dinosaurs

Yesterday I wasn't feeling great, and though I tried to get ready in time to make it to church, we missed it. I looked at the clock and had about 2 minutes to get us ready and in the car. Yeah, it wasn't going to happen.

So instead I told Sean we would read the Bible and spend the day together doing family type things.
We snuggled on the couch and read from his Beginners Bible and he was engrossed in the Old Testament stories. He recognizes the Old Testament vs. New Testament stories, and I am so pleased with how much knowledge he has about the Bible.

Today also started with a book. Sean chose it last night, way past an acceptable time to be reading a book. He has had some insomnia lately. So I asked him to put it in the work area and we would read it today.
"Brontosaurus" is the name of the book. My mom was always picking up one thing or another at thrift stores, and I'm pretty sure this book was one of those items. She always chose educational materials instead of cartoon character books, etc.

A few months ago we went shopping at the Goodwill. We were just looking around and picked up a few books, and Sean always likes to shop in the toy section. While we were there I spied some dinosaurs. I scooped up all I could find, and they were about $1 each. Some of them seem like nice ones and have the name of the dinosaur on the bottom. When I got them home, I put them on the shelf I have for materials that aren't being used at the moment, and knew he would enjoy them with a lesson eventually.
Today was the day to bring those out. We first read the book, and talked about the different dinosaurs in the book, and the differences between them. That book was all about Brontosaurs, so we tried to figure out what the others were in the pictures.
Then I brought out the bag of dinosaurs. He LOVED them. He started to talk about which ones were meat eaters and which ones were plant eaters. As long as he's interested, I'm going to encourage him to keep researching about each one and during what period they lived.