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Monday, March 22, 2010

Creative and fun day

Jeff started his new job today. It is a contractor job in Fayetteville. He called at lunch and said, “He was in training mode.” He also said, “It was busy, but the two other men he works with are friendly.”

The devotion today was about the “Power of Print.” In 1455, a gentleman named Johann Gutenberg printed the world’s first bible. He printed almost 180 copies. I wished I could find one of those bibles today. Because they are worth millions! He never made a profit from his printing invention. In fact, he went to his grave penniless and owing money. Thank goodness for men like Gutenberg and Tyndale though. They’ve made having a bible in different translations easy and accessible. They even designed them with maps and study guides. Today the bible is available in 500 different languages. (Is there really 500 languages?)

Day 39 of the Purpose Driven Life was about “Balancing You Life.” Balancing them with the five purposes of our life which were practiced in Acts 2, explained in Ephesians 4, and modeled by Jesus in John 17, but they are summarized in the great Commandment and the Great Commission. To help us stay balanced we should 1) get involved with a spiritual partner or small group. After all we have a lot to learn from one another and pass along to one another. The book also mentioned 2) giving yourself a regular spiritual check-up. We should also be 3) keeping a spiritual journal. Mine will never be as valuable as Moses’ but it will be valuable to me and possibly JD. And lastly, 4) make sure not to skip passing on what you know.

Again with the geometry terms! It’s like learning a foreign language. Today we managed two geometry lessons. The first lesson was “classifying (geometry) objects.” We learned the terms (some of them repeat): polygon, vertices, regular polygon, regular quadrilateral, trapezoid, parallelograms, and square. They had pictures of them and asked us to find the correct name or the lesson would describe the shape and asked us to name it. (Very hard for me, but JD is all over this so good on him.) The second lesson was all about quadrilaterals. A quadrilateral is any shape with four sides like: trapezoid, parallelogram, rectangle, rhombus, and square. The quiz kicked our butts because they described a quadrilateral and asked us to name what type it was. We only scored a 60% on the test. Maybe a little more practice and we’ll get it. Even though we only got a 60% the lessons were still done with a positive attitude which made it fun to work as a team to defeat the last lesson of geometric terms. Tomorrow we tackle “solid figures.”

Even though JD has already been through the keyboarding lesson from start to finish I figured practice makes perfect. So he went back to the Dance Mat typing website and started over with Stage 1, level one. He worked on the home row keys which were: a, s, d, f, j, k, l, and ;. I asked how many times he honestly peeked and he said, “About four records out of 20.”

The on-line art lesson was messing up again so I had to improvise. I have a fond memory of early childhood. I was in elementary school in LaSalle, Colorado and the class was conducted outside. We looked at cloud formations to see what shapes and animals we could see. I loved it. So today I laid a blanket out on the dry lawn and JD and I sat on it and watched the clouds drift by. We identified some objects and animals. The moon was still out at 1:00 pm, but hidden occasionally by the clouds. We made up funny voices for the leaves running or flying for their lives. We didn’t stay out long but we had fun and hopefully JD will remember the fun lesson. Because it was getting chilly we went inside and made homemade Play Dough. We broke the wad into 6 balls and colored each one a different color. JD had fun making the dough and making things with the dough. The differences between boys and girls is SOOO different. I mad a basket with flowers on the side and a cute caterpillar. JD made trees that fell on soldiers. Then he made a spiky club to smash my cute caterpillar.

For the journal lesson I asked what he wanted to write about. I gave JD two options. He could either write about us sitting outside today on the blanket looking at cloud formations or he could write about what we made out of Play Dough. He chose the Play Dough. I typed it, copied and pasted it to the cursive writing website and printed for him to rewrite in cursive. This is what takes the longest. We made a deal that he would write 4-5 sentences and then take a five minute break. Then, he would come back and writes 4-5 more sentences to earn another break, until it’s all done. This seems to help with the overwhelming writing process. I notice he stayed at the table a long time. I went to see how far he had gotten. He stayed to complete 9 sentences! I was so impressed. That was a big step for him.

There are 14 spelling words this week. There are all in pairs such as “doubt” and “double.” The first four letters of the pairs are the same.

1 comment:

  1. I wish all children could attend F.A.C.S. and
    have a teacher like you. So glad JD is and does.

    ReplyDelete