Weeks 4-5

So I'm not going to lie, Week 3 was hard for Carter.  We had a lot of handwriting that week and that is the thing he dislikes most with school.  Unfortunately it's super important, so we had to push though but there were tantrums and tears.  He also had a rough week behavior wise but thankfully we had a bi weekly ABA therapist stopping by that week.  She has been working with him with the SuperFlex curriculum  and it talks about SuperFlex who is a super hero who helps you defeat bad behaviors called 'unthinkables'.  One of them that Carter really struggles with is Rock Brain.  Having moments when he only does what he wants to do and not letting anyone negotiate with him.  We find them helpful but there are so many 'unthinkables' it's hard to keep up with all of them and remember exactly what all the suggestions are to defeat that Rock Brain, etc.  Thankfully his therapist brought me copies of all those 'unthinkables' so since I had the laminator out today I figured I would laminate them and make a handy book so he could keep it with him.  He is loving it and I am loving that he loves it.

Week 4 and 5 were better.  Carter learned about North American Indian tribes and how they lived.  He wasn't that into it.  But we finished building our wigwams and tepees. Carter didn't really get a hang of how to get the paper turned into a cone shape so I mostly did that part, haha.

This week we are starting week 5 and so far so good.  We learned about Plymouth Rock and the pilgrims.  We talked about how brave they were to leave England in search for a place to have the freedom to worship God in the way they felt the bible portrayed.  In learning about their landing in America, he learned that they used oiled paper for windows.  So we did a neat little experiment to see what happens when you rub oil on paper.  We rubbed a generous amount of coconut oil on a piece of copy paper.

We learned that rubbing oil on the paper made the paper easier to see through.  We also gave it a water test and noticed that the non oiled paper was quick to rip apart.  The oiled paper stayed intact and the water rolled off the paper.  Those Pilgrims were super creative and resourceful.  

I also saw a neat idea to help Carter remember his memory verse, so I decided to type and print up all his verses for the year and laminate them.  I cut the words out very sporadically for him to piece together.  He liked the challenge but he really had this weeks verse memorized already.  As we introduce more verses, I plan to add the words from previous verses to really test his memorization.

I also wanted to review the books of the bible that he learned in 1st grade.  So I found a handy books of the bible printout. I love that not only does it have all the books of the bible but it also has the author, main characters, and key stories from each book. I printed them out and laminated them so that Cooper could enjoy them when he gets old enough. For now I am leaving the books of the bible attached to the book info.  But later as he gets better with memorization I plan on splitting the information so he can later recall what books contain certain key stories.  He listened to the books of the bible songs on his CD and practiced putting them in order.

Once he got them in order he stacked them into a pile.  Then he dropped them and made a mess.  I encouraged him to just put them up since he had already put them in order but he wanted to test himself and see what he could remember.

Hopefully our good week will continue.