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Yesterday T had a really bad crick or something in his neck, so we didn't go to dance or tumbling and we took it really easy (in fact he and I spent most of the afternoon napping--woe is me). I finished reading Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel, and introduced the concept of atoms with Robert E. Wells' excellent What's Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew? Then we read Who Were the First North Americans? by Philippa Wingate and Struan Reid, and E did her math. She spent the rest of the day reading (mostly ahead in the Native Americans books: Me: "You know we are going to be reading them all over again in school so T can learn about it" Her: "I don't mind" oh well--I did put them out where she could get to them...)

Today we started with the Cherokee Indians: ...If You Lived With the Cherokee by Peter and Connie Roop, and we read The First Strawberries: A Cherokee Story by Joseph Bruchac. Then we talked about synonyms and antonyms, and looked at two books about opposites: Nina Crews' A High, Low, Near, Far, Loud, Quiet Story and Tana Hoban's Exactly the Opposite, which I loved because it is wordless, so you have to come up with your own antonyms, and sometimes more than one set will work. I had her list synonyms and antonyms for 5 words I wrote in her notebook, and then we read about Mercury by Larry Dane Brimner. After lunch she answered questions about Mercury in her notebook, while I started making a game called Fast Track which I found in Peggy Kaye's Games for Math. E of course was VERY interested in what I was doing as I took care to do it on the same table she was working on, using colorful index cards and colored pencils and pens for the game board. She finished her Mercury questions as quickly as she could so she could help with the game board and then we all played the game. The game is a brilliant, sneaky way to use flash cards for addition and subtraction facts without being boring drill. You advance around the board by completing the math sentence on the card, ie. a card with 2+4=? would let you advance 6 spaces. She had to answer T's cards as well, which was a bonus. They both enjoyed it and we played till we'd all won several times. Tomorrow we will play again with a slightly more difficult set of cards. I need to think if I can come up with a game to practice her note flash cards for piano...