Off to Europe

Last week was our week off during which we still practiced piano, had Taekwondo, went to a concert at the symphony, and had culture nights for both of the children's JET classes. Let's just say the week off, didn't feel too "off."

Yesterday we hit the ground running with our Europe unit. We'll only be spending two weeks on the unit, because we're going to fit it all in before Spring Break starts, but they won't have a problem getting it all done.

They'll be reading Charolette of Giverny (a fictional journal about a little girl living for a year around all the Impressionist painters in France in 1892). Zoë is thrilled with the art focus. During spring break we're going to take a trip to the art museum to see all the Impressionist paintings they have.

We had a little difficulty yesterday when both of them were complaining about the work they had to do. It seemed like they were just waiting for me to do it for them. Instead, I had them talk about what they were struggling with and come up with a solution. Aiden was working on finding the longitude and latitude of major cities in Europe. The map we had only had a few longitude and latitude lines and he was angry that he didn't know the numbers exactly and had to estimate them. After talking to him and watching him do the lesson, I realized that it wasn't that he was unable to do the estimations, it was that he was mad that he couldn't be precise. So I had him come up with ways to find the real numbers. He did a google search of maps of Europe, but couldn't find any that were anymore precise than the one he had. Finally he found a site that listed the city's latitude and longitude. Normally, I wouldn't have let him do this because the lesson was to be able to understand how to use the coordinate system, but he understood it completely, and the lesson turned into learning in which countries the major cities are located and how to solve your own problem. Zoë hasn't done this lesson yet. I'm interested to see how she responds to the impreciseness. I'm guessing that it won't bother her.