JenEric Designs

Despite being very tired when I woke Dragon up on Tuesday morning, she participated very well at virtual school. She answered several questions, including how many months of the year and how many seasons with FULL SENTENCES in French. We’ve been practicing and it shows. I’m very proud. She also listed the days of the week. She listed the months of the year and the seasons to me, because the teachers asked someone else to list them.

She presented the giant pink pony that we have on top of one of our bookshelves. She mostly spoke in English, but she responded the colours in French when asked.

We came back a little early after the first recess, and she got to talk to her teacher one-on-one. They talked about arbres de Noel, and how we have deux. They talked about her dress (one my mother made for my sister when she was 4 years old) and that it was rouge and blanc.

She listened intently to the story, that was read three times because the kids all loved it so much.

After lunch, Dragon was asked to count as high as she was able, reading the numbers on the screen. She kept losing her place, so I had to get up to point to the numbers (and then the teacher started highlighting them). She got tripped up at 16 again (we’ll continue to work on that) and skipped 19 (ditto), and then refused to count higher than 20.

Then the teacher asked the kids to print all the numbers that they can. Other than a few meltdowns (my 7 looks like a c!) she did excellently.

Homeschool was pretty good this week. It was a little all-over-the-place, since we delivered some presents on Friday.

Dance

She did ballet 2-3 times this week. 

Music

Piano: no piano this week

We listened to French Christmas music this week. (obviously)

Crochet

She couldn’t sit still thanks to the excitement of Christmas. We’ll try to get some more done over the break.

Basic Information

Working on the days of the week verbally is going well. She remembers without prompting, and can tell me the day before and the day after any given day. The months of the year is also going excellently. All months have proper pronounciation now, and we’re working on the month before and after any given month.

The saisons de l’année are now memorized, including printemps. We’re working on how each of them feel and the types of things we can do during each of them.

When I ask her “combien” for any of the above, she now responds in complete sentences.

Printing words

Printing was pretty good this week, although she was rather disproportionately devastated when her crayon broke, so I feel like maybe there was some underlying stress about printing that I didn’t pick up on.

• 

• 

Counting objects/math-type activities

Numbers were hit or miss this week. Sevens, particularly, were a stress.

• 

• 

I had her figure out how many cookies were across and how many were down on the cookie sheet, and then I asked how many rows down I’d need to do, and she figured out that there needed to be 6 across:

• 

Storytime

We read stories from the teacher’s outline that was sent to us on Monday. She enjoyed that, and we will continue to do it next week.

We watched Vampirina in French on Disney Plus, one episode a day. Dragon is enjoying it immensely, and is even recognizing some words!

Activity

Make toilet paper roll art – This was a HUGE hit with Dragon. We picked out what designs we wanted to do, and then we went through the button stash to find appropriate buttons. Apparently we have no black buttons….so instead, we picked out fun shapes and painted them with nail polish. We also had no green buttons, so the nail polish was used for that as well. Then we fought with paper and pipe cleaners and fortunately found little puffs for the ear muffs because I hadn’t considered that we needed that sort of craft supplies! Then came the glue challenge. Gluing pipe cleaners is NOT easy, and I had completely forgotten! Punching a hole and threading it through or stapling it would have worked much easier, however, when I checked them the next morning, the glue seemed to have solidified nicely, so I’m not too worried about it. I will call this a success.

• 

• 

• 

Bake cookies – We made A LOT of cookies. She helped make doughnuts, too.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Learn about Xmas pasts and other culture’s Holidays – On Monday, we had a video call with a friend of ours who celebrates Hannukah. He told Dragon about what the holiday means to the Jewish people, and how it has become more celebrated more recently as Jewish and Christian kids are closer friends and discuss their traditions more often.

On Thursday, we talked to a different friend, who celebrates Lucia. She told us the history of Lucia, how she brought an end to a famine in Sweden, and how it is celebrated now. Here are some videos you can watch about it.

One – the swedish tourism board put out this “lucia for dummies” video a few years back and it manages to be both informative and quite funny! And two – a long string of Swedish Christmas songs for kids.

Jasmine Murray-Bergquist

• 

• 

Keep your eye on this blog, as next week on Tuesday I will be doing a review of the semester and how things will change next semester. Then on Thursday I will be positing the first movie for January! How I Taught My Dragon blogs will continue on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule throughout the new year.