Wired day

The devotion today was about it being “Cinco de Mayo.” On this day the outnumbered, untrained, and poorly equipped Mexican people defeated a much stronger and more powerful French army. That’s why they celebrate the 5th of May. Ezra, from the bible, spent several hours reading God’s word to the people. That’s when the people wept when they realized how they had strayed from obeying God. But Ezra reminded them, “Don’t be sad! Now is the time to celebrate.” This was because they heard God’s words and had understood them. Some people thing That God is all about do and don’ts. But that’s not true. He doesn’t want to stop us from having fun…he wants us to be JOYFUL.

Today we read chapters 46-48 in the book of Genesis. Chapter 46 was when Jacob and his entire family traveled and moved to Egypt. God spoke to Jacob one night. He said (paraphrased), “Go to Egypt. I will be with you. I will increase your descendants. I will also bring you back again. But you will die in Egypt.” Then, it listed all of Jacob’s descendants. (Tough names again.) In chapter 47 Jacob and his family met the Pharaoh. Then, Joseph assigned his family the best land to settle in. During this time the people of Egypt were coming to the Pharaoh of for grain. First they gave him all their money. Then, their livestock. Next, their land and themselves to be slaves for the Pharaoh. Chapter 47 was when Jacob died. But before he did he blessed his grandsons. But he gave the blessing to the second child. Jacob said, “Manasseh will become a great people, but his younger brother will become even greater.”

JD kept interrupting me during the devotion and the bible reading today. It was nearing time for math and he was still wired. I asked him if he took his pill when I asked him to. He said, “No, there wasn’t a pill in the Wednesday area.” I looked at the pill container and saw there was one in Saturday’s area. I got a little mad and said, “Then take the one for Saturday. I just forgot to fill the container back up again.” So for most of the morning Jeff and I emailing back and forth about how wired he was. One of Jeff’s emails cracked me up. He wrote, “Whoo Hoo! Dig your spurs in and hang on for the ride.” (And some LOUD and DIZZY ride it was for the time it lasted.)

Because I need JD to focus during the math review I decided to go a bit out of order today. So we did the word bank lesson next. The new words were: somber, succinct, and swanky. He found the definition and wrote his sentences independently. We also typed up all the other work bank words for the semester and it turns out he now knows 45 new adjectives that he didn’t know in January.

For the journal lesson today we went to a web site that has “Wacky Web Tales” and typed a short story about a rabbit. This is where they ask for nouns, adjectives, colors, exclamations and such. I copied the story and pasted it to a cursive writing web page so JD could re-write the story in cursive. He saw this and said, “No copy and paste!” You would have thought I told him we were giving Tater Tot away. The moans and groans coming from him make me think of those war movies where they’re laying in the field after being shot. (Practice, practice, practice.)

We did the history lesson next. It was all about Thomas Jefferson. He was the third president. He served two terms in office. He thought of himself more as a philosopher than a politician. He is best know for writing the Declaration of Independence and establishing the University of Virginia.

I didn’t have any set lesson for music so JD just practiced the music he already knew on the organ. He did have me search extensively for Beethoven’s 5th symphony movement one. It happens to be his ring tone on his phone. I love that he loves classical music. We play classical music when he’s writing because it calms him down enough to actually write.

Today for math we did a review on whole numbers. Things like: decimals, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, estimating, rounding, customary and metric measurement (including length, weight, capacity, and temperatures), roman and Greek numbers, place values, greatest common factors, least common factors, and finally time. We did the practice test for this goal and he only missed 1 out of 14 questions. I had to assist him on three questions. We did not even cover fractions and six of the questions were about fractions. (He got all of them correct.)

I had JD finish his cursive writing story after school ended. Then all he had to do was finish his social studies from yesterday. He did this right after the cursive story. I didn’t even have to tell him to do it. Yeah…independently!