French Update

We've slowed down in working through Barbier from the plans I posted last time, but lots of learning is going on.

Little girls: We're parsing and construing our way through their homework assignments, one sentence at a time. This is slow going, but I really think it's going to give them the best foundation for continued learning. We work on only about five sentences each day, so each exercise takes about four days, but this gives us time to continue with French Phonics, Madeleine, and their paradigms.

Older girls: We've slowed down here, too, but as we work through each sentence, the girls' understanding is growing by leaps and bounds.

I type up each homework sentence in Pages on my iPad (one at a time, so I don't have to work ahead). Then we go through and discuss each word, its part of speech, its job in the sentence, the various elements of each word (person, number, tense, mood, and voice for verbs; person, number, and gender for nouns; number and gender for adjectives and articles). We also color-code each word as to its job in the sentence and adjectives match the color of the noun they modify, but in italics.

We haven't really done any English grammar in quite awhile, but they're learning so much that I think we'll be okay. Even though we're not really discussing English grammar as a separate discipline, we do discuss it lots in their composition assignments.

An additional help: I let the girls change the colors of the words in the iPad - they think that's pretty cool! The touch screen is still pretty new for them.

SDG!

French - Littles

The littler three were having trouble keeping up with the grammar of Les Oeufs Verts and the French phonics were a bafflement, so I switched them over to oral French lessons until they're more solid with English phonics and spelling.

They're learning the same paradigms as their older siblings, but at a bit of a slower pace.

They've begun learning the parts of the body and left and right. We play Simon dites … or sing Alouette, pointing to various body parts. They've also begun learning the verbs lever (lift up), baisser (put down), toucher (touch), and montrer (show). Sometimes I'll ask them, 'Où est la main gauche?' and they answer, 'Voilà la main gauche!' while pointing to it or holding it up.

They're learning how to count to ten. I'll hold up fingers and they have to tell me as quickly as they can how many I'm holding up. I pulled out the old pre-school number flashcards and they use those for practice, too. I've heard them counting things in French - plates when setting the table, or cups of flour for a batch of pancakes.

Les Couleurs. I simply point to something or hold something up and ask , 'Quelle couleur est-il?' and they answer by saying, 'Il est …', naming as many colors as they can.

Yesterday, we also started working on the names of rooms in the house and parts of a room (floor, door, ceiling, window, etc.). They're most recent paradigm is aller, so we'll be able soon to talk about going into different rooms in the house or touching the wall or the floor.

I have a list of topical vocabulary I want to teach them, along with verbs and some aural constructions (il est … vs. ils sont …, la main droite vs. le pied droit, etc.). We'll simply move through them as we can. I'm also astounded at how much they're learning and how much they all seem to be enjoying it.

An added benefit is that I'm reviewing my French and am filling in some of those holes that have cropped up through my years of not using it.

SDG!

Science: Littles, week 6, Thursday, 6 November

Ch. 15: A Flying Visit to Mexico

Fire Beetle, cucujo

Science: Littles, week 6, Tuesday, 4 November

Ch. 14: A Queer Trial Without Any Verdict

Glowworm

Great Lantern Fly

Candle Fly

Great Lantern Fly

Candle Fly

Science: Littles, week 5, Thursday, 30 Oct.

Ch. 13: Jack and Maggie Are Found Not to Be Quite in Tune

Great Golden Digger Wasp

Science: Littles, week 5, Tuesday, 28 Oct.

Ch. 12: A Remarkable Autobiography

Cicadas, cont.

13-year Cicada, just after molting

Annual Cicadas

Science: Littles, week 4, Thursday, 23 Oct.

Chapter 11: A Very Classical Insect

Cicada Song

17-Year Cicadas

Science: Littles, week 4, Tuesday, 21 Oct.

Ch. 9: A Very Distinguished Musician, and 10: Jack and Maggie Go to a Concert

Katydid Songs

Katydids

Science, Littles, week 3, Thursday, 16 October

Chapter 8: All Full of Glory and Grandeur

Plague Locusts

Australian Locusts

Science: Littles, week 3, Tuesday, 14 Oct.

Chapter 7: Jack and Maggie Have Their Lives Saved

Leaf grasshoppers

Science: Littles, week 2 (Oct. 6-10)

Tues: Ch. 5, Caterpillars Extraordinary

Snake Imitating Caterpillar

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Caterpillars imitating bird droppings and leaves

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Thursday: Ch. 6, Very Surprising Adventures

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French, week 1 (29 Sept.-3 Oct.)

(Sorry about all the edits on this post.  I had to re-work my vocabulary list so it only included things that were fairly stationary and that weren't too small and wouldn't walk away or be tucked away in the fridge or pantry!)

This week, review greetings.

Introduce the following vocabulary, while teaching grammatical gender:

la chaise
la table
la télévision
la porte
la pendule
la fenêtre

le livre
le tiroir
le bain
le lit
le mur
le panier

Have kids write the words on index cards and post them appropriately around the house. Introduce a few adjectives next week, along with the third person singular and plural, est and sont.

History Topics, Littles

Week 1: classical music: Hillyer, ch. 79; listen to Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. Spread music throughout the two six-week sessions; 19th Century painters - spread throughout the next two six-week sessions; Charles Dickens

Week 2: Queen Victoria; Napoleon III and King Louis Phillipe

Week 3: Unification of Italy; Unification of Germany

Week 4: Second Great Awakening;

Week 5:

Week 6:

Science: Littles, week 1 (Sept. 29-Oct. 3)

Tues: Ch. 3, Great Bird-winged Butterfly, a.k.a. swallow-tailed butterfly

Leaf Butterfly

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Thurs: Ch. 4, Butterfly with a Grievance & Other Butterflies

Helioconia Butterfly

Literature: Littles

Eliza:

Island Boy, by Barbara Cooney

Babar and His Children, by Jean de Brunhoff

Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard Atwater
The Complete Tales, by Beatrix Potter

Melody:

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg

The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright

Favorite Animal Stories, by Thornton Burgess

More ideas for the future, in no particular order:

Yellow and Pink, by William Steig

The Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Twenty-One Balloons, by William Pène du Bois

Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden

Miss Pickerell books, by Ellen MacGregor

The Complete Peterkin Papers, by Lucretia P. Hale

Roller Skates, by Ruth Sawyer

Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink

What Katy Did, by Susan Coolidge

Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

Heidi, by Joanna Spyri

Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame