Faith:
Our religion focus this year is still First Communion preparation and it's going very well. Gianna is learning her Act of Contrition now. She knows which word of the consecration she needs to hear to know Jesus is present in the sacrament. In the spring Gianna will receive alongside her dear friend Caitlyn at the abbey, and Father Sebastian is overseeing both girls' FC prep. We get together every so often with our friends, the M's, and Father for dinner and some spiritual Q & A with the girls. Always fun.
Language Arts: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Italic Handwriting Series, Explode the Code phonics drills, misc. early readers.
We finished the 100 Easy Lessons book and now use early readers like Frog and Toad, Little Bear, Biscuit, etc. Some things we've focused on have been breaking a story into parts, narration, reading without the aid of diacritical marks, increase of reading speed, composing a letter, spelling words with silent e, punctuation and general neatness in letter formation.
Math: Arithmetic 1 (Abeka) and accompanying Tests and Speed Drills
Gianna enjoys Math very much and she loves her speed drills best (something I can't relate to). Math is the subject she wants to start with every day. This semester we've focused on counting and writing numbers 1-100 by ones, fives and tens; horizontal and vertical addition; word problems; calendar months in a year and days in a week; less than and greater than; telling time by hour and half-hour; linear measurement by inches; finding the area of rectangles by skip-counting (from Math-U-See); halves and fourths; adding money using quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies; telling temperature; liquid measurement.
Science
We've done most of our science through nature study/observation, often looking up what we've found afterwards online. The rest has been through fun reading on subjects all-over-the-place. Whatever we're interested in at the moment. My goal is to organize and plan this subject better for the spring. But for this year we've covered subjects such as the properties of solids, liquids and gasses; rainforest and freshwater habitats; bodies in the solar system; hibernation and migration of animals, introduction to animal classification; distinguishing bugs and birds by their properties. Our trip to the farms focused on how different vegetables grow in the ground and harvesting. We made three visits to the tide-pools where we observed sea urchins, purple ochre sea stars, algae, mussels, crabs, barnacles, and turban snails, and looked up tide-pool ecosystems and organism habitats online after each visit. I took Gianna's EEG appointment and made a neurosystem study of it using online research on brain waves and proper nutrition for the brain (which led to a food pyramid discussion and the importance of Omega 3 fatty acids).
History: Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans; U.S. children's atlas; Great States Jr. board game; online printable summaries of the lives of famous historical figures
This year so far Gianna has learned about the lives of of George Washington, Ben Franklin, Helen Keller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo, Alexander Graham Bell, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Harriet Tubman, Pocahontas and Christopher Columbus. This week we're reading all about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, of course! Patrick does Gianna's geography with her, which she loves (and so do I). Their focus has primarily been on the states and their locations on the U.S. map.
Fine Arts
Gianna takes ballet once a week at a local studio. She's improved quite a bit in the last few months and it's a lot of fun to watch. She really enjoys dancing and says she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.
Artwork: We use the Draw-Write-Now Books for learning basic drawing and background technique and the Gluck Method for focus on proper tone, texture and shading. We draw a lot, but with limited space I save only the best of Gianna's sketches. One day I'd love to have a home with some kind of art studio to put more of the little hands-work up on the wall. (Our refrigerator gets too crowded.) And while we're dreaming, let's make that an art/music/sewing studio....with built in floor-to-ceiling bookcases....white ones, with walls painted pale grayish green-blue! (I haven't really given this much thought. :)
6 comments:
What a wonderful first grade you're having! It all sounds delightful, for both teacher and student!
That sounds like a fantastic first grade fall! I'm curious how much time you typically spend each day "doing school" (formally)? And what you do with your younger daughter during that time?
I'm just starting dipping my toes into "preschool" with my four year old, and he loves it (he's practically teaching himself to read) but it is SO hard to find time to do it because I have two other younger children. Not sure yet how to balance it all.
Ok, so I'm curious...What is "which word of the consecration she needs to hear to know Jesus is present"? I'm working on Confirmation studies with my son, and for the life of me, I don't know! :)
Emily, we spend about two hours in the morning with sit-down work (math, reading, writing etc.) and incorporate nature study, fine arts, etc. into the afternoon. The time for those things depends on what we're doing of course. I hope that helps! You'll ease into it - it really isn't work at all (so far). Just enjoyment in learning. (I'm told that changes in 3rd grade!) Madeleine is alongside us most of the time. When we do tablework I give her paper, colored pencils, scissors, etc to keep her busy. If she's not interested in what we're reading/doing (and starts getting in the way) I try to scoot her outdoors or to another room to play. It hasn't been a problem so far. Also, Gianna can do some of the work independently, which frees me up to be with Madeleine.
Literature Goddess (what a great pseudonym!), in Latin the words are "meum" and "mei" for the consecration of each species respectively (i.e., Hoc est enim corpus meum/Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei). In English the words Gianna needs to hear are "body" and "blood" (i.e. This is my body...This is my blood).
The Church defines the exact moment of consecration by a single word in case there's a need to answer the question whether the host has been consecrated. For example, should a priest faint or be killed sometime in the midst of uttering the words of consecration, it will be known whether the host and/or wine have become Jesus, which will determine how to handle the species and whether or not one or both can be distributed.
I'm typing fast here and this is the explanation I've heard from a priest, but does that make sense? If anyone has something to add to this, please do so. The Church is so very wise to think of these things, isn't she?
Thank you! Yes, that makes perfect sense! Though I've grown up in the Church and attended Catholic school, I'm still amazed at how much I have to learn. :)
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