rainy indoor day

Highlights:

•  For geography, we discussed where we live, starting with street and ending with universe. I stressed proper capitalization for 7 yo, he stuck in western hemisphere and multiverse. Then I asked him to write a sentence, including all of the above. With 5 yo, I just went over written words. Then I printed out maps, to demonstrate how these levels are related. 5 yo settled for circling the correct area. 7 yo colored in each location, with coloring in surrounding locations in another color.
• For math, 5 yo continued in his brother's text book. More breaking up tens into ones. 7 yo did some measurements.
• Next was Chumash and Yesh Lanu Lama. 5 yo did his work independently! I wrote a bunch of " mi amar el mi" and "al mi neemar" for 7 yo and he got most of them right, open Chumash. We reviewed pesukim from yesterday and did two more. He hemmed and hawed, but did go through them. I think his hesitation is because now he can express his fear of unknown ( new words that he has to read, translation). Once I asked him if he was nervous, he admitted so, and then went on. He asked an excellent question: how could Lot go out and talk to his sons-in-law, if people of S'dom were right outside the door? Then we listened to this aliyah at abaalkoreh.com, the  kids sat in front of the computer like listening to iTunes. He is the musical one, loves to sing, let him pick up trop and get preview of next pesukim.
• For reading, 7 yo read about explorers ( ongoing topic), 5 read Big Dog, Little Dog. During reading, he didn't get is why the dogs were not comfortable in their beds. I thought it was obvious, but I bit my tongue. I had to show him first page again and asked him to compare dogs. He noticed different sweaters. He noticed that one had eyes open and the other one, closed. After all this, he noticed that one is big and one is small. Then we went back to the story. I asked him to compare the rooms. He noticed that one had a nightstand. I asked him why the other one didn't. Only then he realized that the beds were wrong sizes. This kids really perceives world in his own way.
• 7 yo asked for Spelling Power, so we did it. I decided to start with Level D ( 4th grade). I introduced the program, explaining that we will only study the words he does not know and only the words that will come up in his writing. I also explained that the rule for the group will be stated first, instead of his guessing what the words have in common. So far, so good.