When Onomatopoeia Falls Splat!

Thank you, Julie and Leslie, for your kind comments to encourage me past our rather flat start to the new school year. Also, thank you for the information on the various curriculum resources and experience with local teaching facilities. Calder and I are loosely following Saxon's Algebra 1/2, and I supplement with various math workbooks.

As for science, I have pulled together a weather program that we will follow for three months consisting of library books, videos, experiments, and relevant field trips. I'm weaving in literature, art, and creative writing all related to weather to round out the study. For example, today I taught him about onomatopoeia. We listened to water and storm recordings on the Internet, read a few poems and books heavy on onomatopoeia and alliteration, and then made a word bank of all the words descriptive of water sound from which to construct an original poem. Sure, he loved it all until he had to write a poem. Sure, the fear of it reduced him to tears and consequently made me cry (I'm all for honesty here). But we talked our way through it, and in the end he wrote this poem:

Water can fall everywhere.

And it can sometimes swirl everywhere.

Dibble dopp dopp!

The rain is falling from the sky.

Of the twenty-four words in our word bank, he chose the two from Mr. Brown Can Moo. Ha! But considering how confident he was that he could not write a poem, this is a wonderful outcome. He was so proud he pushed through, and I was happy, too. Hopefully he will have more fun doing my lesson on Jackson Pollock--relating raindrops to drip paintings. What kid wouldn't want to sling some paint around? (Speaking of which, have you ever splattered here?)

For his literature, grammar, and history, he is attending a teaching facility.

And, now, more links from the magical European link fairie who keeps me in good supply! Thank you! First, My Audio School is an online resource for recorded lessons on history, art, and literature. About 25% of their content is available for free. Otherwise, you can purchase an annual membership for $14.99. I briefly browsed the site and clicked on the picture of Monet's waterlilies--since we had just seen them at the High Museum. I was skeptical that the format would engage Calder, but he was on the computer screen like flies on honey.

Also, here is a list of free web seminars offered by the National Association for Gifted Children through the end of the year.