Language Art Lesson 1, Day 5

8/27/11

Material used:

• The Lower Case Alphabet in Second Grade, Supplement to the book “Sixth Sense Reading and Writing”, By Sofi Mandil (Age 10) & Kristie Burns
• Stockmar stick crayons.
• Stockmar block crayons.
• Main lesson book paper (we used DRAWING PAPER 17.5in x 11.5in)
• Blackboard Chalks

Today we continued with our letter story of lower case a from The Lower Case Alphabet in Second Grade, very much like what we did with the lower case c story.

We started with Kamina retelling the “The cloud that cries” story with a little reminding from me. Then we thought of the words that has “c” in it and I wrote it on a sheet of paper, underlining the letter “c”.

After that, I told her the story of “The perfect apple”. It’s a story about a perfect apple that can talk and play and has his own plans. When he discovered that the boy was going to eat him, he wiggled and wriggled to tip the basket over so that he and the other apples could escape.  In the picture, I had the apples in the shape of the lower case “a” with some green leaves on the stem.

 To my surprise, after the reading she told me that she didn’t like the story. When I asked her why, she said that she wanted the boy to eat the apple. To solve the problem I told her that when she drew the picture she could draw the boy, and that the boy could pick up the apple.

Then we played a little “I spy” game while I read the story for a second time. She was to shout when she heard an “a” sound word during my reading and then I was to write down the offending word on the paper. It worked out rather well and she had a blast of it. She has had a lot of practice with “I spy” the beginning sound of a word, some with the ending sound, but not so much of the middle sound. So in the beginning, she had a little trouble with the middle “a” sound words, but she caught up rather fast and we had fun. In the writing, there is a little squiggly “smiley” line above the letter “a”, that means that it’s a short vowel sound. Right now, Kamina only knows about the short vowel sounds of the vowels. We’ll introduce other vowel sounds later.

Then we proceeded with drawing and printing on the main lesson page just like the previous day. She wanted to take a lot more initiative today. She decided that she wanted to have green apples instead of red ones, and the stems a different color with the leaves brown and orange. She also decided that in her picture it was a girl instead of a boy who picked the apples. I allowed her to use stick crayons instead of block crayons to draw the girl figure as that is much easier for her and she had fun doing that. The trouble came when we started shading the white space of the picture. Even though I told her that we wanted to keep the background shading light so that it doesn’t overshadow the drawing, she insisted on shading as hard as she could and it rather overpowered her picture. I pointed out it to her, but she didn’t receive it too well. I let it drop, as it’s often the case with Kamina, she remembers what we say rather well after she sleeps on it even when she doesn’t appear to take in what we say on the spot. Then we wrote “The perfect apple” on the right side of the page, and in the middle of “perfect” she told me that she was tired and wanted to stop here. That sounded the alarm to me that I had been too much of a perfectionist in criticizing her writing, wanting every letter to be perfect. So we decided to take a snack break, and I told her that I was very proud of her and that she had been doing a splendid job drawing and writing. After that, she was in much better spirit and wanted to finish her writing. And the rest of the writing went much more pleasantly and smoothly, and her writing turned out quite well.

Lesson of the day: I should watch myself well and her reaction as well, so that we don’t burn out on things. I was also more capable of incorporating more things into the lesson as I’m settling into it more comfortably. Sometimes it’s hard to remember all the material and methods that I’ve studied and at my disposal. I think it’ll only get better and easier as we both get more used to it.