Redwall Abbey

School is improving. 

Since the beginning of using K12, I have been somewhat disappointed with their Language Arts piece. Mostly it's been reading to the child, and asking comprehension questions. Blech.

At the moment, however, we're actually starting to get into grammar and exciting things like identifying and labeling types of sentences (asking, telling, exclamations, commands) and even writing a few of our own. David had to sequence pictures today, and wrote, "The birds are looking. They bild a nest. One bird lays four eggs. The eggs hatched." (Ok, so spelling is still a mess.) The other group was, "She is digging. She is planting. It is growing! She waters it." You have no IDEA what kind of huge leap this is. Really. And he's so proud of himself.

*happy dance*

The second part of LA is to incorporate free reading time. Right now we're working our way through a book called Redwall.
I never read this before. We got the name of it off the PBS Kids website; a character that David likes in the program Cyberchase recommends the book as his favorite. So, of course, monkey see, monkey do. I looked up the name and figured it looked kinda cute and we looked for it at the library. Read a chapter or two, got bogged down, and it took us a long time to get into it, despite David's persistent reminders. Incorporating it into LA has allowed us to read it daily, and has created a tiny monster.

He LOVES Redwall, and sometimes I'm amazed that he can understand it. Still, he'll rush through his LA "homework" with the promise of Redwall, and while two chapters is standard he still asks for "Another chapter! Another chapter!" or "Go back to Matthias!" (Main character) whenever I try to quit reading. Tonight he had trouble getting to sleep because he was all wound up about Warbeak and what the sparrow is going to do. I told him I didn't know, and then said, "Goodnight, Warbeak." 

"I'm not Warbeak!"

"Oh. OK. Goodnight, Cornflower."

"NO!!!!!"

"OK, so who are you? Cluny?"

"NO! I'M MATTHIAS!!"

Hmmm, my bad. Still, it's fun to see him wrapped up in a novel. As I told Doug, "Dad, you just don't UNDERSTAND. The book is really interesting, and you've never been caught up in a book so good that you didn't want to quit reading!" He snorted at me. "Yeah," he said, "That's how we end up burning though a book in 48 hours with no sleep." Oh, so been there.

Found this interesting little item, too. It's a cardboard/paper model of Redwall Abbey, the central place of action for the novel. It looks awfully neat, but I can't find it at the place where I found the photo. Apparently it came out in 1999, and is a tad bit harder to find now. Still, some people on Amazon.com are selling it (for $50! Ow!), and I'm thinking of how well this might go over. Especially with the knowledge that the Redwall book series is really, really long, with all sorts of spin-offs. It looks like there are at least seven books in the main series, but I'm not sure. Pretty prolific stuff. (There's gotta be a boxed set somewhere out there, right?) But David likes asking questions and connecting characters and keeping score of what's happened to whom, and trying to predict what will happen next. This, to me, is far more like what Language Arts should be about. 

And I broke out the new Science stuff; we'll be comparing the relationship between weight and mass tomorrow, and how it's not necessarily related to volume, through the use of a balance scale. Phonics is covering blended sounds vs. digraphs, Math was a semester wrap-up (with a four-page test! They're NEVER that long!). Today's History covered Laura Ingalls Wilder (quite briefly), and Lauren was thrilled at how close her name came to "Laura." 

Oh! And speaking of History, Grandma Jean has introduced David to the new $1 Presidential coin series that the Mint is starting. He saw that on TV and freaked out. I also saw they had a new series of coins with eagles, but those are actual GOLD COINS, and I'm NOT gonna be getting him $300 gold coins. 

Both he and Lauren went outside to play today and came tearing inside, shouting that they had found "snake eggs." Or perhaps spider eggs, they weren't sure. At any rate, I felt it best to go and investigate. Apparently what they'd discovered were some kind of bug cocoons that show up on the leaves every year. I have no IDEA what kind of bugs these are that to this, but it's quite consistent. Or maybe they're egg sacs or even spores from some kind of tree fungus. I haven't the slightest idea. But the kids lost interest when they found out they weren't spider eggs. 

And we haven't made it to the library yet to check on the baby chicks! Perhaps they're gone by now, I don't know....