Here Comes The Sun

Listen to "Here Comes The Sun"

"Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right" - The Beatles, 1969

 

Isn't it amazing how good music can make you feel? The weight of the world maybe on your shoulders, yet when a feel good song comes on the radio as you drive along in the car, suddenly "...it's all right."

 

Yesterday afternoon a huge storm hit South East Queensland. Brisbane CBD was brought to a standstill because of flash flooding. For me this meant a two hour round-trip with the kids asleep in the back of the car last night to rescue my poor husband when all city trains were cancelled. Photos flew around the internet of flooded shopping centres, cars floating down streets, trees splintered and twisted and I even saw a picture of a tree on fire after being hit by lightening! Crazy.

 

Fast forward to this morning. I am driving my daughter to school. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and everything looked clean and refreshed. It made me think. Life may throw a crazy storm into our path now and then, but the sun does comes out once it's over and it really is alright.  

 

Tuesday's Lessons

On Tuesday during our English session we played Car Park Alphabet again, but this time we also had 'letter sound' sign posts on each parking spot. To check Sam's knowledge of his alphabet, I picked out a group of four cars at a time and asked him to find the car with a certain letter, E.g. "Which car has a small letter 't' on it?" Then I asked him to drive it to the parking spot with the big letter 'T'. When he got to the parking spot, I pointed to the sign and said "T says...?"

An odd looking car park, but it worked. He got them all correct, with one exception. He parked the car with a small 'd' in the big 'B' spot. I'm keeping an eye on this because he frequently mixes up his b's and d's.

In our Math session, I decided to review matching numerals and number words from 1 to 10. I used coloured circles with the words/dots and pegs with the numeral. I had already put the number pegs in order on the 'washing line' so I mixed up the circles and let Sam work out where they had to go.

And to finish our Math session we read this book.

Wednesday was a horribly humid day that left both Sam and I drained. Even the air conditioning struggled. I decided to give lessons a miss, although he did play some of his learning games on the iPad. Later in the day I spotted that Sam had changed the weather picture. Boy was he right!

 

 

View from the front of our house as the storm brewed.

 

Today's Lessons

 

After the free day yesterday we jumped back into our lessons today with some new 'Cool Words'. I tried a slightly different way of introducing them this time.  

I asked Sam to find and cut out the word and then glue it to the Cool Word sheet.

We read the sentences I had written and I asked Sam to find and circle all the 'Cool Words' in each sentence.

Then I let Sam play with the app 'Talking ABC', where he types in the words and the letters turn into digital modelling clay and animals. It's fun and a great way to practice the new words.

 

 

This is a great new app I found called 'School Writing' by Demografix. It is designed for teachers to use in Australia and New Zealand so the lettering styles fit with our curriculum. It's a great way to practice letter formation, but the really cool thing is that you can add your own lessons, complete with sound and graphics. I created a lesson with the new sight words so Sam could practice writing and learn the new sight words at the same time.