During class yesterday, we flipped our usual schedule and completed IEW first. Writing skills continue to sharpen, and I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to the students read. Next semester I am going to stress presentation -- reading loudly and clearly and making eye contact with the audience -- at a higher level. I may engage moms' help in that. Just so you know... :)
This week's assignment is to complete the Boston Tea Party stories. I know a couple of you are starting from scratch, so refer back to last week's lesson and post for those notes. For the rest, your student needs to add dress-ups, revise and polish, complete the final checklist, and practice reading aloud. The new dress-ups are simile and metaphor, which we discussed at length during class yesterday, and also "3SSS" -- three short staccato sentences -- which we covered briefly.
When you get to it, you'll see that dialogue is also a new option on the decorations checklist. IEW introduces it in Lesson 11, which we skipped. I intended to talk about it in class yesterday but ran out of time. If you can, go over the punctuation and capitalization rules for dialogue at home this week and encourage its incorporation into the tea party story. Remember to teach that a new paragraph is required every time the speaker changes. Students often forget this.
Although I have a poetry lesson scheduled -- haiku, so fun! -- we will spend the majority of our IEW time next week reading these stories. If any students want to dress the part (colonists, Indians, English soldiers, etc.), bring it on!
The next two weeks of EEL consist of review and, if you'll take the opportunity, what I'll call "reflection." During class yesterday, the sentences we drilled were examples of simile and metaphor in Bible verses. I believe these sentences, so many of which you can find in Proverbs, provide super learning opportunity with our kids on so many levels.
For example, we examined the sentence "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life." First, it's a simple, declarative, S-Vl-PN sentence that includes prepositional phrases, so there's our EEL grammar. Second, it employs metaphor, so there's our IEW writing style. Third, it uses that metaphor to illustrate godly wisdom -- created things to explain spiritual principles, the visible to demonstrate the invisible -- and thus we can take time to dialog and reflect with our children on the meaning and application of the verse. When our school time touches both the head and the heart, we're at least doubling the benefit, right? :) Only the Lord knows what He will build on the foundations we lay, but what a privilege we have as homeschooling moms to build both knowledge and godliness into our children. So take time to reflect together these next two weeks.
Finally, I talked with the kids yesterday about redeeming tickets next week for our Gilded Coupon Campaign. Remember that we give what we've earned in the fall and receive what we've earned in the spring. Here's how this semester's "giving" will work:
- Each ticket is worth 25 cents. Students have had the chance to earn up to 24 tickets -- one Admission Ticket and one writing assignment ticket per week. So they will have been able to earn up to $6.
- I will match what they've earned, which could double them to $12.
- Each student has the opportunity to give out of his or her own pocket. It could be 50 cents, or it could be $10.
- I have two sponsors who will match what each student gives, thus tripling the "out of pocket" donation. So, for example, if a student decides to give $4, it will become $12.
- SO, say a student has 20 tickets. The 20 tickets would be worth $5, and I'd match it, so it becomes $10. Then the student decides to donate $5, and the sponsors triple it to $15. All total, the student's donation becomes $25.
- My goal here is for the kids to tangibly see how God can take their "small" effort and multiply it for His purposes.
I've decided that this year's donation will go to Wycliffe Bible Translators on behalf of the Knott family, who are home with us on furlough this fall and part of our Foundations, Essentials and Challenge programs at Westside. This spring, they will return to the field and begin oral Bible story translation for a population where less than 2% have heard the name of Jesus. I love the idea that the time our kids have spent studying the English language will enable us to invest in translating God's story into another people's language!
Please let me know if you have questions. Have a wonderful week together. See you Tuesday for the semester's final hurrah!
Erin
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