Workbook discoveries

We did workbooks today for school. The principles of Charlotte Mason discourage long hours of book work for children of this age, instead encouraging you to stick to short (like, 20 minutes) periods of time that will allow the child to pay attention for the entire time and therefore develop habits of paying attention rather than getting frustrated or drifting off mentally. I think we adults could use some practice of a similar type!

Anyway, this kind of work is new enough to my kids and they are still curious enough that once we start, they don't want to stop! That's a good thing!

Things I noticed today:

-Hannah recognizes all her numbers but cannot yet write them well. That's a pleasant surprise to me, since we haven't focused on learning them at all. The writing part is completely in-keeping with a CM philosophy. Writing comes as their hand-eye coordination develops - sometimes not till 6 or 7, depending on the kid. She seems to be drawn more to numbers than letters. What do I do with a math kid? I suspect she and her Daddy will spend lots of quality time enjoying math together. :)

-Teaching opposites is kind of hard! I'm pretty good at finding other ways of describing things, considering I've been teaching piano for 15+ years...but that one had me baffled a bit today. Eventually I just pointed out the answers, trusting that over time the concept would catch on. Then we moved on to something else.

-Audrey did well with colors - choosing the right color crayon to color the picture. She had a little trouble remembering green and purple for awhile, but it came easily today.

Yesterday we were all so tired of being cooped up in the apartment that we went to my parents and played outside for awhile. It was time to focus on P.E. for the day. :) The girls also did a bit of yoga with me this morning. That's always entertaining.