Learning By The Way

Moriah made mashed potatoes with Aunt Raquel today. This is one of her favorite foods, and she wanted to learn how to make it. We had them for lunch, and they were yummy. Lunch turned into a laughter fest. Samuel started it by telling his sister in a voice both piteous and commanding, “Please don’t chew on my ribbon!! I keep telling people not to chew on my ribbon.” It struck me as uproariously funny that he has had to reprimand more than one person for chewing on his ribbon, and I started laughing uncontrollably. He waivered for a moment between being offended and laughing with me. He chose laughing. I won’t even delve into the fact that it seems somewhat odd to me that he is attached to a particular piece of ribbon to begin with…

After lunch, it was off to the library. It was the last week for reading program prizes, and everyone got to pick out a book. Moriah borrowed 2 American Girl books, Samuel chose 2 alien books, and Toby picked 2 Bionicle books. I hope they aren’t getting in a rut…

Yesterday, Samuel came to work with me.  A part of our educational goals is for our children to see that the world is bigger than our homeschool and the body of Christ bigger than our local church.  The children get to see both when they come to work with me.  My workplace is very flexible regarding children here and the environment is friendly to bringing little ones who are big enough to keep quiet to the office.

I have a small table in my office that Samuel worked at and read, and often there are things he can do here as a volunteer to help out.  Yesterday there wasn’t much grunt work around but he managed to keep himself busy and we had a wonderful lunch at IHOP.  Samuel finished his workbook page before we got here (he did it in the car) and was able to interact with quite a few people he doesn’t normally see.

We’ve completed the formal learning time today. Moriah chose an easy addition page. Samuel worked on factor trees again, then did some subrtraction. Toby completed a multiplication crossnumber puzzle, and we finished up the decimal lesson from yesterday. I used two abaci side by side, one for whole numbers, and one for after the decimal point. Since he already understands place values on the abacus, he was able to see how the abacus on the other side of the decimal point had place values less than one. We had a good time finishing up the page.

We didn’t have poetry night last week- it was so busy with traveling and evening appointments. But we are starting up again this week. I’m working with Moriah on her poem “A Fairy Went A-Marketing” and with Elsie on “There was a little girl” . Toby has a humerous selection “The Twins”. Raquel is working with Samuel and Peter on their selections. Samuel likes to keep us in suspense about what he will be doing.