goddess of love & beauty

Ki is working on a Game for his Mythology LapBook. It's a Astronomy/Mythology Matching Game.

It's like Memory Match, but one card will have the name of a planet or moon and the MATCH will be what Roman god it is.

For Example he has a card that says DEIMOS (moon) and the matching card is "SON of the god of war (Mars)" and another that says VENUS (planet)--and he made this in fancy letters, too... the MATCH is, of course, goddess of love & beauty. He has 9 matches done and 6 more to make.

These are cut in circles out of card stock, round like a moon or planet.

He will highlight a constellation in his lapbook, cut out of a star shape, of course. He is using my Creative Memories Cutting things. It's good for his manual dexterity and fine motor skills. I think I will call it Occupational Therapy for Dyspraxia.

The Pantheon Lego Model isn't going well. We may have to find a different medium for this project.

I noticed today that though I have made sure Ki is doing scripture work with his MayTerm Study, I have not had the older 2 doing it with their Astronomy. So tomorrow they will get to use my Strong's Concordance to look up some Bible Passages.

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KNITTING SCENE :

My gloves are done. I have already thought of a better design I want to try...

Yes, I know, I could just LOOK UP patterns online or at RAVELRY, but what's the fun in that? I am figuring out on my own what works for fingerless gloves and what doesn't. I like reinventing the wheel, I guess.

In June I will be working on my DNA scarf. For this I will be following a pattern, to the letter!

And I will be teaching Ki to knit a hat "In the Round" in June.

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SCHOOL THOUGHTS:

Tuesdays are Independent Work days. I go to Bible Study in the morning and The Boys do their morning chores and morning school all on their very own.

G&C have been doing their Morning MayTerm class all on their own the whole month. (Astronomy). I wrote out things for them to research and projects/reports for them to work on for the month, but they are doing everything on their own.

K really needs one on one, constant supervision to get anything of reasonable substance accomplished. On Tuesdays I try to give him a list of things he can do himself, based on what we have been doing together. Usually it is working on his lapbook and reading online links I have found for him. I give him a decent amount to do, expect 1/4 of it to get done, so when he actually gets half of his work done, I'm good with it.

Today when I came home they were all researching how to draw Anime Style and practicing that. Ki had finished his reading book, too. (Number 3 in the Series of Unfortunate Events).

Knitwit. Make that a KnitTwit.

I am working on the second glove. It was going SOOO Nicely. It looked better than thee first.... then I dropped a few stitiches, lost a stitch, and developed a hole. It was all because I thought I was not such a hot-shot knitter that I could knit while watching TV.

NOPE. No Can Do.

So I will take out the last few rows and restart.

I don't even think Cindy can easily fix this one.

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MYTHOLOGY CLASS!!

is still going well. I hoped to get Ki to make a model of the Pantheon out of paper and straws. He tried. But with his dyspraxia, some things are just so hard for him and SO frustrating it's not worth it. He said he'd make it with Legos. The Pantheon has an Oculus. it's cool. Ki wrote some vocab words for the architecture.

Yesterday we had a long drive to visit a short doctor.I had Ki read in Acts 17 about Paul in the Greek temple of 'all the gods'. We talked about how it wasn't THE Pantheon, since it was for 'all gods' it could be called a pantheist temple. Then I showed him how to use the Strong's Bible Concordance to look up verses and had him look up verses that talk about the greek goddess Diana (Artemis). I think he liked that, being able to look up verses like that. I taught him how to look up verses online the other week for his lapbook.

While in Santa Barbara, I pointed out that the entrance to the parking garage had a portico; which was one of his vocab words from the day before.

ASTRONOMY- Gavin is still eating it up with 2 spoons. He loves showing me all the notes and drawing in his Astronomy notebook and due to the Sketch Class this month, his Astronomy notebook is full of little sketches.

May Term Day 3 (Misty Mountains)

Meltdown adverted; Ki's Mythology Class went well today. We are studying Graeco-Roman Mythology. We did some Myth Story Reading, Some Lapbook work, Some writing, Some Bible Research, and some discussion time.

Ki is looking forward to showing his finished Lapbook to his Sunday School Teacher at church.

Gavin loves independent research of science topics. He is just eating up the Astronomy Class as it is pretty much all "research astronomical stuff and write down what you learn". He goes on and on, telling anyone who will listen about his latest tidbits of knowledge. He and Connor have their 1st 2 Constellation Reports finished.

We met Brian for lunch on Base, then we went to Petra's house for Art Class. Today was Misty Mountains: water painting techniques. When they take classes from someone else, I like to sit back and just observe how they do under someone else's instruction. It's good for them to be taught by someone not me and good for me to get a break from being the one teaching and to observe how they are for someone else.

They had fun and did well.

<<-- Ki's

<<-- Gavin's

<<-- Connor's

MAY TERM DAY 1

After our long weekend, we were all tired. K&C woke later than usual. Our school day started at 9:45 instead of 9. We just skipped Story of the World today; which is fine. Today was the first day of a very new session, so today was mainly about talking about the new things we are doing, passing out notebooks and schedules, going over goals and lessons for the month, and getting a start into their new areas of study.

Ki liked the little Schedule are in the front cover of his notebook. He enjoyed using the daily schedule I gave the boys to fill in his Chart in his notebook cover.

He also liked the Cross Word Puzzle. I should him how to find the down and the Across and how to count the spaces and uses letters from already filled in answers to make sure he the correct word. I had him read through all of the Puzzle Clues, so when we are doing our reading and studying throughout the month he’ll remember unsolved clues in the cross word and go fill them in. He actually recalled 3 while we were reading his book and was happy to remember and fill in his cross word puzzle

[LINK FOR THE CROSS WORD PUZZLE] -also click to see the CLUES and print them.

Gavin and Connor did well with their studies. Gavin was excited to show me his notes and progress and tell me what he’s learned and what he plans on studying and including in his reports.

We finished with Morning Session at 11:13 and I sent them out to play a few minutes before the next class (Creative Writing). They do so much better with school when they take breaks to be really active between classes. They did some boffer sword practice for about 15 minutes as their break.

For Creative Writing I had them do a page from the book I have. I made 2 copies of all the pages, so 2 boys can use worksheets and 1 can fill in the pages of the workbook. They’ll take turns with the book if they want. Being that today’s class is short class we just talked a little about good description, using better adjectives, writing things enjoyable to read that make the reader better able to imagine. Then they did the worksheet pages. Ki had a lot of trouble with it. He talked and talked and goofed and gabbed, because he couldn’t think of anything to write. I had to remind him that this was a time for les talk and more writing. But I hate how ‘Public School’ that sounds. They got to get lunch when they finished.

He actually did better after his brothers finished and left the table. He had no one to talk to or at so there was nothing to do but write, so he could go eat lunch.

(Ki had a teensy little sensory meltdown (more like a teensy stubborn fit), but he was able to get over it on his own and it was almost a non-issue. It's a good thing we did the "Physical Therapy Time" before this class!)

LUNCH HOUR- I finished my Bible Study Homework. And ate. Because I was hungry.

SKETCHERS was Post-Lunch.

I must say that I am pleased with how Sketchers Class went. KKi can have a very hard time with feeling like he doesn’t have enough choice and is being told how to do everything. He took an art class once and she tried to get him to use the different art/sketching pencils- NOT just the school pencil. He wouldn’t have any of it. He didn’t want to be told which pencil to use when he ‘knew’ he liked the mechanical pencil best and ‘knew’ it did the best job. And He’s not good with “draw a turtle”- he’ll want to draw what he feels like drawing.. Which is what art is; drawing what you feel and ‘see’, but that I not what art CLASS is all the time.

BUT he did very well and didn’t complain at all about being told the exact things to do.

Gavin is drawing using the CLOSE CONTROLLED GRIP. (above)

(above)- Ki's page using both the CONTROLLED grip and the LOOSE grip with different pencils and the pen. Ki liked using a ruler to separate the areas of his page and he recorded which pencil he used for the different drawings. I had tols the boys to make sure they had their mechanical pencils with them so they could try it for the different techniques as well. I would tell them to use their different 'art pencils' (whichever of the 3 they wanted and to write which it was ) and then would always give them a "Use whatever you want" task after they did their special art pencils.



(above) Gavin's DOODLES using different pencils. Then his Shading and Smudging Techniques.