Homeschooling Journal: April 2014 Part 3

 We loved babysitting this sweet guy! :)

                   

Field trip to the Farm

We picked our own artichokes and had a delicious lunch.

                  

                 

                   Read on.

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Sometimes, all you need is dark chocolate to make all things better. :)

Practical life: Mixing black tea and sugar for our ongoing kombucha brew. The love to help.

        

We also made bread that day. They helped me add the ingredients.

Our church back home had a sermon series about Revolutionary Love: love that has no strings attached. We were encouraged to anonymously pay for people's food, drinks, treats, whatever and hand them a card similar to the one in the picture.
They inspired me to make our own (for our family). Here, you see the front and the back. We love using them. People are so surprised and it is a great message of love.
If you are interested, I will be happy to email you the pdf file for you to print some on cardstock and hand out.

                   

Our morning reads for that day.

Classical Conversations Review, Spanish Bible Reading and Palm Sunday Story

    

    

         

Easter Printables Pack from The Little Natural Cottage

Go to the very bottom of this page to see the link to get it for an amazing price.

                             

Montessori Language Arts: Rhyming Poetry

                                    

Classical Conversations Review and Pledges of Allegiance

                        

A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education)

Montessori Language Arts: Silent (Magical) E

 

Above: Short lists with CVC words. Read aloud. Add silent "e" and read aloud again.

Below: Long lists with CVC words. Read aloud. Add silent "e" and read aloud again.

 

Below: long lists

Cover the silent "e" at the end of each word.

Read aloud.

Uncover the silent "e" and reread aloud.

This is a beautiful quote I found. Love it.

 

The Chart that Changed our Lives

K has been dealing with a little something called "asynchronous development." What that means is that he isn't developing at the same rate in all areas of his life. He has been tested and came out as highly gifted. He is at a middle of first grade level in Math, Science and Social Studies, at the end of second grade in English, at the beginning of third grade in Spelling and close to fourth grade in Reading. Emotionally, as a gifted child, he feels a bit out of sync and feels everything very strongly. He is definitely developing chronologically socially. His intellect is far advanced, but his emotions and social areas are still that of a 4-year old.

After doing a lot of research, a lot of talking with my husband and a whole lot of prayer, we feel so much better about how to go about helping him in this situation. The last thing we want is for a distressed, disgruntled child because he takes things so seriously and so to heart. I found a great article (CLICK HERE TO READ IT) that gave me this idea.  

1. We got our large post-it notebook.

2. Wrote "Reaction Scale"

3. Numbered it on the left from ten down to zero

4. We started with 10, being the worst reaction you can get (yelling, crying, kicking, stomping, etc) and we thought that our house burning down would be a good reason to display all of those outrageous emotions. We wrote in a circle "OK" because in that instance, it would be ok to react like that.

5. We went to number 1, where we would barely react and we wrote "NOT OK" in a circle next to it, signifying that it is not ok to have those overreactions.

6. We thought of a number 5 reaction and then filled in the rest of the numbers. Next to all of them, except for the 10, we wrote "NOT OK" in the circle.

7. I told him that from then on, whenever he overreacted, I would make a circle with my hands (like the letter O) and tell him "NOT OK" so he can remember the chart and stop overreacting.

8. We role played a couple of times.

I am telling you, IT WORKED FOR US!!!! Wow! It has been a couple of week and he is really self-moderating well. I have to do the "NOT OK" thing maybe once a day, if that.

It is amazing how much it has helped! :)

We hung up the chart in our living area, where we can see it and refer to it often.

I highly recommend it for those children who have a tendency to overreact or have extremely intense feelings about things.

     

                                             

Rosetta Stone: Latin American Spanish (Homeschool Version)