Weekly Report 2008:13

Literacy:
Joshua has only one more book to read and he will have finished the second (orange) set of Bob Books. Hopefully I will be able to borrow the third from my friend when we have Bible Study at her house tomorrow night. Anna seems to be able to blend quite well when I have her read sentences on an ad hoc basis. I am thinking I might get back to having her read the first set of Bob Books - I didn't want to push her, so we haven't done any for over a month, but I do think she'd ready.
Joshua's copywork has ranged from "Nemo is a clown fish." (when he was reading the book introducing the [ow] grapheme) to sentences adapted from the Bob Books, such as "Mum, Dad and Abigail had fun in the wet rain." (highlighting the [ai] grapheme).

Literature:
We finished up Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, and Anna is still telling me she's "reading Pinocchio" when she wanders around the house pretending to read aloud from whatever book she has picked off the shelf. I think they enjoyed it; I did, anyway!
On Monday we went to the library to return our sea-related books and I managed to find Pinquo by Colin Thiele (an Australian author, possibly best known for Storm Boy) which tells the story of a fairy penguin, called Pinquo, who "can swim, skip and dive faster than the blink of an eye. ... Pinquo is a hero." (An excerpt from the back cover.) It has a very sad ending, but I'm hoping the kids will still appreciate it. Joshua likes it so far because we read about Fairy penguins a fortnight ago and Anna just loved listening to the story and then acting out (with a teddy standing in for Pinquo) what we'd read so far. I'd like to read Storm Boy, which is about a boy and a pelican, to them as well but it wasn't at the library when we went and I haven't had a chance to check their online catalogue.
Some of the "classic" picture books we've enjoyed lately:
Randolph Caldecott's Picture Books published by the Huntingdon Library Press by facsimile from several very early editions (1878 and later)
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton (1943)
Captain Pugwash A Pirate Story by John Ryan (1957)
Tim to the Rescue by Edward Ardizzone (1949)
Interestingly, the editions of these last three books that we are reading are all published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books, which I'd never heard of before. I will have to add them to my mental list of favourite publishers of children's picture books: Walker Books, Orchard Books, Red Fox, Picture Puffin and Little Golden Books.

Mathematics:
Joshua and the girls have each had a go copying colour patterns using this mathematics-oriented game board a few times last week. I also used this activity as an opportunity to introduce Joshua and Anna to the method of keeping a written tally using the //// method. They've been enjoying taking time to use "manipulatives" for maths rather than the Singapore stuff, but we're back into that this week, working on measurement.

Science/Geography:
We've finished our time studying sea creatures with the trip to our local aquarium (although you wouldn't know it from our literature selections) and we're moving on to animals and other occupants of the rainforest, especially looking at South America. Lots of invertebrates coming up, I fear.