Today's Learning

And now for something completely different . . . today during read aloud time, we read about Michelangelo the painter in our book The Story of Painting. N was so interested in his work on the Sistine Chapel and asked so many questions about it, including, "Mom, what was it like to paint lying on your back?". The answer? Let's find out! We taped roll paper to the bottom of the table and had the boys take turns lying on the chairs to "paint" on the ceiling. It was fun, and they talked about Michelangelo through out the day, so I'm betting this lesson is sticking :o)

For Andrew's handwriting lesson, we used the Animal Stencil Book to trace animals onto craft paper. He also wrote his name on his work. We counted this as a handwriting lesson for Nicholas, too as he added the names of the animals and off-the-cuff written comments to his tracings. It was a fun writing lesson. We also talked about what continent the animals they traced live. We looked at a montessori continent puzzle map and talked about other things we know about the continents.

We also had a atrium presentation of the Parable of the Mustard Seed. We started using Moira Farrell's album for ages 3-5 at the beginning of the liturgical year. I am hoping present several parables over the next few weeks because Nicholas' first reconciliation is in a few weeks and I'd love to present the Good Shepherd presentation before that time. While I know that these materials are not official COGS materials, they have blessed my family in such a deep way. The boys have been able to understand, deeply, things that I, as an adult still struggle to understand about our faith. So, while we may not present everything "on schedule" (making the materials is time consuming), everything that we do present has such a profound impact.

Nicholas loves subtraction and was so happy that his Math U See work today was all subtraction. He even completed three pages from Explode the Code.

We had to stop to go to art class, so after supper we will finish our read aloud time. One thing we are planning to read is P is For Pelican: a Louisiana Alphabet Book. Its always interesting to see what else we end up doing once we get started with our read aloud picture books.