Wednesday, January 26, 2011

pedro and the money tree

Today we worked with the story "Pedro and the Money Tree," a traditional Mexican Trickster Tale as told by yours truly. In this story, that rascal Pedro hangs his last few golden coins from a Mesquite tree, then tricks a couple of passersby into paying him all their money for it. Above is J's depiction of the buyers and seller haggling over the money tree. Below is Zoo Boy's vision of the money tree.

Much less resistance from Zoo Boy today. I really think he just has a lot of trouble transitioning back to school rhythms after having been away from them for awhile. Also, I do think I'm going to try to rearrange our weekly rhythms to honor that the fact that our "heavier" work needs to be kept for the mornings (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), and I think if I plan to do our reading on Sundays (just the story), Tuesdays and Wednesdays (with some handwriting and math practice work as well), it might keep things running smoother for us. I hate having to drop our Journal work on Mondays, but maybe I can move that to Tuesday or Thursday afternoons and then find a comparable activity for the other afternoon to keep the balance.

Will continue to give this some thought....

2 comments:

MM said...

I thought your Thursday afternoon was already full?

Harvest Moon Farm said...

LOL, I like a reader that knows my schedule better than I do! ;)

Yeah, it's pretty full, but that's one of the things I'll be looking at -- if Tuesday isn't the only day we're doing something "formal" in the afternoons, it'll feel less instrusive to our rhythm overall. In any case, whatever we do will be very "lite" and not very time consuming on either day, just enough to establish a bit of a "school vibe" to work our way to a story being read.