This Week

We're half-way through with 1st grade math, and I'm thinking of skipping ahead to 2nd grade sometime soon. Jonathan's still bored by the repetition, and even with copious skipping, it's been almost completely review for him. He's getting to brush-up on money, but I'm thinking he could do that just as well with the 2nd grade books. Any recommendations for non-repetitive math? If it were up to me, we'd just lay back and learn through play, but he loves "math meetings" and the whole ritual aspect of doing it every day. He wants to do it every single day even though it's getting on his nerves to a certain extent.

We're studying ancient Africa this week and I'm putting together our feast for Friday: chicken with figs, papaya stir fried rice, fried plantains, date and banana bars, and date chewies. I have no idea how authentic any of this is, but the recipes sound yummy. Jonathan and I went through the ingredients speculating how abundant they might have been 5,000 years ago. For our feast/party, we're also making a bunch of homemade instruments out of household items. I'm looking through his library books to get more ideas for the party, too. Friday night, good-neighbor M is going to be hearing and smelling some strange stuff coming from the little red cabin.

Also, Dan's boss is from Sierra Leone, and I've been trying to figure out if J would be interested in talking to him about what he's been learning, but he hasn't given me a straight answer, yet. I've also been trying to ascertain from Dan just how receptive the boss might be to such a thing.

I've been able to stall him on the 3rd grade spelling thing and we've just been writing down words that he mispells in our day-to-day activities and working on those.

We're finishing up arachnids and will be moving on to reptiles soon for our Animal Kingdom studies in life science. Like math, alot of the things we've been going over in science are review for him, as well, so we've just been digging deeper. I never realized just how widely he has cast his nets these last 6 years. Going into a subject, it's amazing how much basic and even in-depth knowledge he's carrying around already.

He's finished The End by A. A. Milne (which he liked very much: But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever/So I think I'll be six, now, for ever and ever.), and is now copying out Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson and memorizing that in the process. I usually copy out three or four lines a day for him to copy and memorize. These are the poems that he's dedicated to memory while working on his manuscript writing since August:

The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rosetti
Work by Anonymous
Time to Rise by Robert Louis Stevenson
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
The Berry-Queen by Cicely Mary Barker
Hearts Are Like Doors by Anonymous
I Know All the Sounds That the Animals Make by Jack Prelutsky
Monday's Child, a Mother Goose rhyme, adapted by Sarah Buffington
Days of the Week, another version of Monday's Child that he liked better, I think
The End by A. A. Milne
The Months, a Mother Goose rhyme

His writing has improved so much. He had never written on lined paper before August (or was it September) and the difference is amazing. Lined paper. Who knew?

He also studies once a week with the Jehovah's Witnesses. The little boy (he's 13, I think) who studies with him is very sweet, but very much a JW. I've been trying to give J a more balanced view of world religions with books like this one, but he's so drawn to the literal and concrete. I so wish that Buddhists came door to door with beautifully illustrated books explaining their religion to little children. And Jewish people, and Muslims, and Hindus, and... We could have religious study every day of the week.

We got a Bionicle magazine in the mail yesterday and he's been devouring it over and over again ever since. He and B and N spent most of today playing outside in Metru Nui. J has our property divided into different Bionicle zones. I'll tell him to take something out the back door and he'll say, "You mean in Po Metru?"

Um, yeah.