Language Arts Block 2 / Week 2 - letters

The rest of the week went smoothly.  We're mostly back into our rhythm, although twice this week (including today) my husband took Elie during part of the morning, which helped immensely :)

Yesterday we revealed the letters:

Letters for The Princess in the Tower - Light, Cat, Princess, Ziz, oX

At the last minute, I added the X for oX.  It's not an ideal method, since I'm not using the first letter, but it bothered me that I we had all the letters except X and I thought it would be better this way than for Yoav to just "take it on authority" as Eric Fairman of "Path of Discovery" says to do with remaining letters (it's the standard, I'm just quoting him because I like his terminology).

And Yoav drew the letters:

Yoav's letters for The Princess in the Tower - Light, Cat, Princess, oX, Ziz (N was from previous week)

Yoav was beyond excited to do five letters.  After drawing these letters, he wanted to find out how many letters he has left, so we made a list (from memory) of all the letters we've done so far and discovered that there are nine left.  Yoav was oddly giddy to find out that we would be doing the remainder of the letters in the next two weeks and that in two weeks he would know all the letters.  He was literally shaking with excitement.  Gotta love homeschooled kids!  :)

We did a drawing activity yesterday - we're participating in Marsha Johnson's drawing class (via her Yahoo group, waldorfhomeeducators).  The class is intended for parents, but I thought it would be fun to do it with Yoav (and it is!)  Each week, for a total of eight weeks, Mrs. M will tell us what to draw and we then send in the drawings to her to be uploaded to the Yahoo group so we can see them all and discuss and get pointers from her.  This week the subject is "moon".  And here are our drawings:

My drawing of a moon for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Yoav's drawing of a moon for Marsha Johnson's drawing class

Today was Watercolor Day.  We did an exercise from Live Ed (borrowed from a friend).  I told a story about how Blue was playing in the forest (painted around the edges) and then Yellow came to play (painted in middle).  Blue and Yellow don't know eachother, so they don't want to play together.  But they were both happy to play by themselves for a while...  (continued to add paint)  Said that as they got closer to eachother, they'd feel a little scared (so that's why the paint is darker further away).  Then Red came to play.  Red is good friends with both Yellow and Blue, so she played a little with Blue (painted between the yellow and blue and then mixed a bit with Blue) and then Purple joined in the play!  Red also played with Yellow and as she was playing with Yellow, Orange came to play!!!  Such a fun exercise, and they came out beautifully:

Yoav's watercolor painting

We made muffins this morning and then in the afternoon, we dyed a rainbow of playsilks (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) with food coloring.  I'll post that separately with the method we used once they fully dry and I take photos.

The kids have been happily playing in the playroom for an hour and a half.  I'm embarrassed to say that it's already 8:30pm.  Usually we go upstairs for bed no later than 7pm, but my husband is working late and this is the most fun the kids have had together in a few days, so it's hard for me to end the fun...  But now I must...