Flower-bearing Spring

Devotional: This week’s devotional was Bhagavad Gita 10.35 with Krishna saying “Of seasons, I am flower-bearing spring.” We talked about spring and the equinox and read stories about spring and flowers.

Language Arts: We’re really liking Primary Phonics. Workbook 4 is getting to be more challenging and still fun. He did up to page 24 this week, focusing on words ending with ank, ink, onk, unk, and ing. He really loves cursive, it seems to be more natural for him than printing.

Math: We had 7 more planned days with subtraction, but he kept saying it was too easy and wanted to move on. I said he could if he took the chapter test and got at least 20 out of 25 answers correct. He eagerly took the test and got 100%! One was originally wrong until he double checked it and found the mistake himself and corrected it. I guess subtraction is easy after spending so much time on addition! So, this week we finished up pages 82-84 of MM 1A. plus the test. Then we did the first 3 pages from MM 1B introducing place value and numbers to 100. We like this math program a lot. He’s having a lot of ‘a-ha’ moments with it.

Science: We added more to our plant book about local Hawaiian plants and their uses. We drew lots of flowers, including a 4 foot sunflower on the chalkboard. We labeled the parts of a tree and read about the rubber tree. Next week we will be finishing up our plant book and our month block of learning about plants.

Lots of love and gratitude to you all! :)

Technical Difficulties

My slow computer isn’t turning on today, so my updates here will be short for a while. I’m still recording our adventures by hand and will hopefully be posting again here soon. Thanks and well wishes to you all! :)Christina Krishna Priya Dasi

Flowers and Fruits

Devotional: We continued memorizing Bhagavad Gita 9.26 "If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it."

Science: We created flowers, leaves, roots, and sepals out of paper, the pistil and stamens out of pipe cleaners (we could only fit two), and the stem out of a straw to help remember the names of the parts of flowering plants. We drew and labeled the parts of a flower with a sliding piece of paper that reveals a pollen tube going down to the ovule. We colored and read about a different Hawai'ian plants and added them to our plant book. We read lots of great books about flowers, fruits, and gardens. How Groundhog's Garden Grew has been a favorite. We planted some seeds in the garden and weeded, too. Some beautiful plant drawings were also added to the plant book.

Language Arts: We started the next level of Primary Phonics workbook 4. We decided to skip workbook 3 because he didn't need that much review, and the new concepts he is already familiar with. So, pages 1-7 were completed. They focused on 'sh' and 'ch', which was review and good handwriting practice. This book gets into R controlled vowels later on, so it will soon be new, hard stuff, but he is ready for it. Govinda really wants to learn cursive, so I've been showing him the cursive letters on the chalkboard. Today, he wrote in his PP book with cursive! He likes how he knows where the letter starts...at the bottom, and it's fun how it keeps flowing without having to pick up the pencil. For reading, he's been practicing with Bob Books.

Math: He did Math Mammoth pages 73-82, which was more subtraction practice with fact families and their addition twins. He's really getting the facts down with the constant practice...no flashcards needed! He doesn't need to look at the abacus for most facts up to 10. He's been expressing his interest in place value and big numbers, so I'm looking forward to doing that as soon as we're done with subtraction in a week or two.

Thanks to all who care to read all of this! Infinite love and gratitude for you all! :)

Seeds, Roots, Shoots, and Leaves!

Devotional: We wrote on the board Bhagavad Gita 9.26 "If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it." We added leaves, flowers, and fruits around the border and discussed the verse. We read the story of the sacred Tulasi plant from the book we own called Beauty, Power, and Grace The Many Faces Of The Goddess.

Science: We're adding more to the Plant book everyday. We've drawn and labeled the parts of a seed, plant, and flower. We're watching celery stalks soak up water with red food coloring and drawing it. We've gathered leaves and made many leaf rubbings with block crayons. We've been reading about a different plant everyday and recording it's uses and other important things to know about it. We used Kukui nut (Candlenut) juice to mend a cut (after reading about it). We gathered Kukui nuts, which are 50% oil, and polished our wooden toys with it. Of course we read many library books about plants and how they grow. One library book called Plants Of Old Hawaii has been great with its catchy poems full of information on plants along with a black and white picture which I copy for the boys to color while I read about it.

Language Arts: This week Govinda finished the whole Primary Phonics workbook! It's a great feeling. He had fun looking back through the 80 pages of 40+ days worth of drawing, coloring, and writing work. These past two weeks, he did pages 57-80. He can easily read many long vowel words now. PP helped distinguish the difference between them.

Math: Govinda did Math Mammoth pages 60-72. Subtraction is really going well for him now. Math Mammoth may seem like ordinary workbook pages, but there's something really special about it that is making math really make sense. It makes him think for himself more than any other math program we've tried, which is working well for him.

This week we spent some time remembering our studies of Japan and sent prayers for everyone there for the 8.8 earthquake and tsunami. We discussed survival skills and the history of earthquakes and tsunamis.