Tuesday

a little ink drawing attempt by me, 

but she wiggles a lot.. so I had to fill in the shadows while she was giggling 

8a    - cleaning and organizing - discussed why we clean and why yes, it will be important for scientists and engineers to clean as well, not only in their jobs but their homes.
8:30     - break

I put on the movie 'Epic' and she watched nearly the entire thing.
I needed down time...knit a bit, drank coffee.
Getting ready for town, planning town

11.30a    - Khan Academy math - subtraction and addition reinforcement..7s table in multiplication up to 7x5, working in multiples to do addition and subtraction quicker than working on fingers, and writing out problems from words with minimal help.  Is it subtraction or addition they want here?  How do you know?  How do you write it.  Reinforcing doing the ones column before the tens, and what borrowing really means as well as how to do it right.  Started out crying about every little thing, brain hurts, why we are doing this.. then she saw I wasn't giving up, and she asked good questions and really started to click the reasoning for HERSELF after a bit, went a bit further to do a full hour.

Teaching Note -- She WILL try to tell me 7 minus 4 is 5 (during the first ten to twenty minutes) just to get me to give up on her. but I won't take that.. I'll ask her to count back 4 from 7 and show me how that equals 5.  She'll throw a frustration fit because she wants to do something else.  I'll say this is what we are doing and I really want her to tell me how that equals 5.. 'because' doesn't work.. etc.  When she knows that Mom is in 'real math mode' she stops fooling and starts working.  Only then does she really click.. and then I can stretch her and see what she knows and she doesn't.  And, afterwards, when she knows she did real work and did it well, she says it was 'fun'.. public school never did that for her, and they would never have gotten accurate test results from her.

12:30p    - break, drive to town

1:3p    - library use of catalog computer to find books on skeletons (question the other day)
             comparing the Dewey Decimal numbers to the author name fiction tags on books
              going out to the 'adult' book section to compare that the numbers and
              name tags mean the same things out there as they do in the kid's room.
              computer game - 4th grade ClueFinders, math, geography, logic
              lunch out in the parking lot
              hibernation pretend/role play with reasoning, questions, science application
              ---she climbed under a table and made a den with blocks as her stored food.. which was 'strange' but she answered the questions well about why she needed to store food, what she would do all winter, and why, and what would happen if another animal came to her den, good or bad...?

4p    - bookstore choosing appropriate books to buy, thrift store, bought two tennis rackets and a toy welding mask for 25 cents each item, Lowes
---asked why shadows 'break apart as you go higher'.. meaning she is holding a spoon in a light from the window at night and watching how the further up she holds the spoon the more shadows it has.  We talked about making an experiment with that..

5:3p     - break

//plan to do some reading in either the Cats to Love book she picked out or another one.
8-9p - bopped around, watched arts and crafts I was doing, cut out a paper hammer, wrench, screwdriver and drill and pretended to be fixing things with her new welding helmet toy
9:15-9:30 - read two small books she had bought for herself today.

I found several reading textbooks and a science textbook for Esme's level between the library bookstore and the thrift store.  One of the reading books had some good 'levelling' passages with pictures and words to know to test her knowledge.