Tuesday, October 9, 2007

32

A pretty great day today! For narration I read the myth of Prometheus from Usborne's Greek Myths for Young Children. She seems to be having some trouble with these longer pieces, so I asked her how she was listening. She was trying to memorize them! So I suggested she try to picture the events in her head while she listens, and then play the movie back as she narrates. We'll see if that helps tomorrow. Anyway, then I read Growing Up in Ancient Greece by Chris Chelepi, and a few pages of DAulaires' Book of Greek Myths, and we had a break. When we came back, I read Richard Harris' I Can Read About the Sun and Other Stars, and had her do a little worksheet they gave us at the planetarium-- the configuration of the stars of Casseopeia (a big W) repeated four times and the child was to make different pictures out of it and label them (basically making their own constellations). She made a W, a robin, a moth, and my personal favorite, a flying pig. I downloaded this cool free planetarium program, Stellarium, last night and we used it to look at the constellations. You can look at them just as stars, as stars with connecting lines, or as artistic pictures laid over the stars. We looked up a lot of the constellations we saw at the planetarium yesterday. Then I went here and let her mouse through a thoroughly cool introduction to finding Orion, Betelgeuse, Jupiter, Casseopeia, the Big Dipper, and Polaris. She did so well at finding the constellations! Sometimes even I couldn't find them till she pointed them out. And then I let her and T go in the closet with a flashlight and The Glow-In-The-Dark Night Sky Book by Clint Hatchett. Then after lunch she did her math while T watched Peep, and she watched Peep when she was done. Grandma and Grandpa came over and helped us decorate the front of the house for Halloween, which made her very happy, and then after they left she did four pages of nouns. I found these cool Constellation Detective worksheets which I forgot to give her--I'll probably just give them to her to do on her own when she feels like it.

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