Grade 4, Lesson 1, Day 2 ~ The First Wrench

We got up earlier today. There is nothing like waking up because the dogs are barking like maniacs, only to have your spouse tell you that he feels like he has the flu and your child tell you that he wet the bed. Seriously, I wasn't even out of my bed yet and I was behind. I got Papa a glass of water and some ibuprofen, sent the child to take a shower, and stripped the bed. Oh, and I brought in the barking dogs.

By 8:30 the boys were bored; they had already eaten breakfast, dressed, and finished a few chores. I told them there was no reason to wait until 9 am ~ they could get started on their lesson work. Last night I rearranged the workboxes so that the first 5 had independent work (journal writing, math practice, penmanship, spelling practice, and independent reading). The boys actually breezed through the boxes fairly quickly and needed very little instruction from me; this is a big change from before and I already like it! I spent my time updating our school records. Other than needing to file our Private School Affidavit (can't be done until 10/1) we are set.

For now Tuesday is our day for language arts. Some language arts work is done everyday, such as journal writing, independent reading, and spelling work. Today we reviewed the parts of speech and the boys wrote simple sentences then circled the nouns in blue and the verbs in red. Can I just say that I geek out on grammar? They wanted to know what kind of word "the" is and since the Oak Meadow definition of "the" as a "helping" word wasn't good enough I explained to them that it is a definite article.

We are working on drawing and music daily. Today we practiced holding colored pencils and sketching shapes without making outlines, and then we practiced holding and strumming our guitars.

I think we get an "A" for effort today ~ it is hard enough to focus when Papa is home without him being ill and requiring that we be quieter than usual.