I didn’t sleep after I finished writing 3 blogs last night.
I think I desperately need to do something for myself. Not for Den, not for the family, not for the church, just for myself, something to please myself. Something useless yet made me happy.
Usually, a novel will do that job but I’m out of that and my ebook site is not working properly. I ended up watching 2 hours of an HK series on the net. :)
At 5am, Den woke up and got me to sleep.
It was a totally wasted 2 hours, nothing was done but it made me happy.
We slept until 11am this morning! :)
MA was here with EE and I just woke up! Den was awakening by the doorbell.
Since the house was a bit messy, I decided to let them play while I vacuumed.
After that, we studied together.
After that, we pray for each other. I wanted each of them to come up with ways to help their friend when their friend is angry. They both thought the best way was humor. They both agreed when one of them was angry then the other should say or do something silly to make the angry person forget her anger. Not a bad idea, I shall see if it works.
I also practiced something I learned recently from one of the homeschool blogs - Retelling story.
I used to do something like that when they were younger and we have 4 kids homeschooling together. MA and I make them sit in their destined places and placed their bowl in front of them. Then we taught the lesson. When we finished, we asked them questions about the story we just told, if they can answer then we put cereals in their bowl. It was a good way to keep their concentration.
Now since I homeschool Den alone, I seldom do that. The blog reminded me it is very important for her to repeat to me what she learned so that I will be able to know how much she absorbed and what things she gets confused with. It will help her to remember the lesson better too. When she is older then she can write it down in her scrapbook.
This will help her build up paraphrasing and summarizing skills too.
Both of them can repeat the stories to me while looking at the pictures in the book - Pray & Play Bible for Younger Children. Den was a bit more articulate than EE.
After that, we sing a funny song and play hide and seek. One of them chose to be David and the other was Jonathan:
(Tune: Where is Tumbkins?)
Jonathan: Where is David? Where is David?
David: Here I am! Here I am!
Jonathan: Do you need my help, friend?
David: Yes, I need your help friend!
Jonathan: Run and hide!
David: Run and hide!
Then “David” hide while “Jonathan” counted to 20. They took turns playing the roles and did not want to stop.
After that, we make a heart shape using an inkpad and the sides of Den’s right hand and EE’s left hand (curled up fingers a little bit) to remind them LOVE requires two parties.
Their take-home project is to write a love letter to each other.
Then I let them work on 2 worksheets about animals – differentiate the animals who live on the land and animals who live in the sea; match animals with their food – while I cooked. We have fried noodles today.
They ate for one hour! I purposely left them alone after I finished my lunch. I wanted to let them practice self-control plus I need to make a few important phone calls.
Finally, I still had to be in the kitchen with them.
We had a good discussion about “teasing” though. I told them teaser only teas if they respond to it (get angry, get mad, etc), the best way to do this is to treat it like jokes and laugh with them and very soon the teaser will forget about teasing. I had this discussion with Den last week when she was teased by her friends. She listened to my advice and has been working really hard not to respond to teases. But then it is always easier to say than done.
We also talked about words that we should only use in private. EE has a habit of shouting out and making jokes about private body parts in public. So we talked a little bit about we should only whisper if we need to talk about private parts in public and should never use them as jokes.
After lunch, they only have 30 minutes to play before EE had to leave.
Den was quite dejected after that. She did not want to study. She said she already study and now she only wanted to read books. I let her be. She took a whole stack of Berenstain Bear books and sat down and read.
She did not cry but I can tell she was really sad that her friend leave. Finally, she told me she wanted a sibling because she was lonely. That’s the first time she actually asked for a sibling! We talked more about it and I told her she might feel mommy and daddy love her less when the baby is born even though it is not true. I also told her I might not have time to homeschool in the first few months. She said it is ok as long as it is temporary. She also said she is willing to share everything.
Hmmm…..interesting! God’s sign? :)
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