Today started badly, as I had a crap night’s sleep, and B decided to make a vet’s appointment for the pneumonic rat 45 minutes after I was woken up at 8am. We did get there almost on time, and fortunately they weren’t busy so we didn’t have to wait. The vet gave Whitewhiskers a different kind of antibiotic which looks like it will be easier to administer as it is a paste not a liquid. She seems to be relatively perky this evening after two doses of it, so hopefully it will make more of a difference than the last lot did… After we dropped the rat home and I had a chance to have a shower (eeuuww, I hate going out without having one in the morning!), B had pottery, and K and I went to D—— SVDP and then the library to kill the time before picking her up again. I found a copy of Cane Toads – An Unnatural History (the book of the film) at SVDP which I thought B would like. We bought morning tea from the bakery before picking B up and going home.
We did manage to get some good work done after lunch. B finished her practice and aced the test on her latest spelling list. She did the revision sheet to finish off the unit on subtraction and Data, but had a mental block about doing subtraction with borrowing. As I am also doing it by rote with no real understanding of what I’m doing, I’ve decided that it’s pointless me trying to explain to her how to do it. So E, can you spend some time with her going over the principles behind it, please? I’m sure you can find a way to get it to make sense better than I can, since I’ve realised that I’m even shaky on the actual process, let alone the whys of it! *is embarrassed* She finished the rest of the sheet with little difficulty, and then cheered herself up by playing against the computer in timed races to practice various skills. She practiced the 10x table and one of the addition games, and then crashed in a heap when trying out one of the subtraction races. I managed not to compound her feelings of inadequacy this time, fortunately, and her dejection didn’t last long.
My package of eBay books arrived, and I read her the first chapter from Bog Bodies, which she loved. The reading level is still slightly above her at the moment, but now I’ve read her the first chapter, I could conceivably give her comprehension exercises based on what we’ve already read, since she’s familiar with the contents already. I was going to start giving her comprehension exercises from a workbook we have, but she’ll get much more out of it if she’s interested in the subject matter. I’ve also read her another chapter from the first Deltora Quest book, and she dictated a story outline to me this evening which shows a definite stylistic influence *g* I have run out of brain for the night, but do want to finish reading this article on teaching reading comprehension, since that seems to be the point at which B has gotten stuck. From what I have read so far, there seem to be some good strategies I can help B learn to employ if we make daily reading more of a priority. Ahem, I should admit that we didn’t do any today as we couldn’t find The Stone Giant. Aaargh.
In the afternoon/evening we did the demo lesson unit from the second CyberEd science course we were looking at buying, the Physical Sciences one. It was a lesson on chemical and physical properties of matter, which B already knew a lot of and consequently didn’t enjoy as much as the Life Sciences one we looked at last week. But it convinced us that buying the three introductory-level courses (Physical Sciences, Earth and Space, and Life Sciences) would be a very good investment for our munchkin over the next year, so we signed up for all three at the Homeschool Buyers’ Coop. It will take another month until we can use our subscription, because the offer stays open for buyers to sign up until the first week of October, and the final price will depend on numbers. It won’t be more than US$140, though, which seems pretty reasonable for a year’s science curriculum!
Speaking of science, last night Zane came round and they spent a happy hour discussing geology. E had had the brainwave of asking Z and J to pay rent for our storage space in interesting rocks for B, and last night was the delivery. She scored some very cool pieces, including a plant fossil Z dated to the Triassic. He even gave her a basic pine display case which he carefully labelled for her with descriptions of all the pieces. Needless to say she was very pleased!