Jen Desmarais

This Tuesday at virtual school, she was able to turn on and off her microphone (although it took a bit of time sometimes). The small groups were a bit chaotic, as it was the first time trying to do them. Hopefully they’ll be worked out by next Tuesday (although when this post goes live, it will have been yesterday…). Keladry raised her hand to talk three times – to sing the “Bonjour song”, to recite the days of the week, and to answer a question about trees. All of which she did in French! I’m so very proud of how well she’s doing. I’m very impressed by her teachers. She loves them. The homeschool portion of the week was short by one day, because of Thanksgiving, but that’s why we have a flex day worked into the schedule every week, to give us some wiggle room.

Dance

No martial arts this week, but she did ballet 2-3 times this week.

Music

I forgot to get her to practice with the letters, so we did it verbally just now as I’m writing this post. I’d say she’s doing pretty well.

She had another piano lesson on Saturday. They reviewed whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes, and tried clapping their rhythms. She was introduced to whole and half rests and how not to clap them. She played the piece from last week, as half notes, and had no trouble at all. She is holding her wrists properly. They’ve started learning “Chopsticks”.

We listened to a bunch of French music. Coeur de Pirate was the favourite yet again and I am thrilled because it is a beautiful album.

Crochet

We managed to get a few more stitches in on Friday.

Basic Information

Rather than pull out the papers, we did these verbally this week. She can now recite the days of the week in French without prompting. I took my thought about 12 being too many and shrank it down to only the first three, which we started learning on Friday. I think she’s remembering them by sound, but that’s okay for now. We’ll work on the first three months until she can say them with minor assistance before adding the next three months. I think this is working. *fingers crossed*

Printing words

Tracing the letters went better this week than printing them. I think she was having an off day today.

Counting objects/math-type activities

She’s still forgetting that sept comes after six. I’ll need to figure out a game or something to help her remember (note to self…)

Storytime

We didn’t read any French books together this week.

Activity

Film script in stop-motion (2 days: taking the pictures + putting them together on computer, find music to go with it) – She directed me in how to move the toys (and I showed her how to make the basket look fuller than it actually was – movie magic!) and followed her script and storyboard extremely well. She told Éric how long to make each frame and where to put the text. Then we recorded her playing her xylophone to make the music. Éric put it all together because the technical ability to do that was a bit beyond a 4 yo’s ability, especially since she can’t read yet!

The completed movie!

Make a shoebox diorama – we looked at the provided example, and then I asked her what she wanted in hers to make it Halloween-y. We searched google for the objects, put them in a word document, and added blocks underneath them (or on top) to be able to stick them to the inside of the box. Then we made the background very simply – just black with a yellow moon. She had fun using the “big-kid” glue.