Lucy's Year 1 Term 1 Exams

I really enjoy reading the different exams that Celeste shares over at Joyous Lessons so I thought I'd share Lucy's. Plus this way, I know I can find them if I want to look back later. Yep, totally selfish mom blogger over here!  These were Lucy's first exams so I had no idea what to expect. She does a great job narrating normally but she's never had to recall things at a later time "on demand." Keep in mind that these are transcriptions of her oral narrations not her writing and that we did these over an entire week, just a few questions at a time.

Bible

Tell your favorite Bible story so far.

How about Moses. So God told him to build an ark (Mom interrupts. Do you mean Noah?). Oh yeah, Noah. So God told Noah to build an ark because God was going to send a flood. A big flood to cover the whole earth. To cover the whole world. And so he built an ark and how long did the ark take to be built? It took a whole year. Well, at least it took a year, it might have taken more than a year. So, uhm, he built the ark and then he put all the animals in. The animals came two by two. The animals were all on the ark and God sent a flood. And it lasted, how long did it last? Uhm, well. Then once the flood came and then there were mountains and mountain tops and they were stuck on top of the mountain so he sent a dove out and it came with a leaf in its beak. So they all went out and they went and lived in different places. The end. 

 Tell about Gideon and his three hundred.

There was an army being kinda rude to them so they decided to fight them. So they went to the stream and whoever lifts it doesn’t but whoever licks it like a dog, can. But God said “it's still too many, still too many.” So the man told his dream before the fighting but they didn’t really fight. They had pitchers and lamps in the pitchers and they broke the pitchers and blew the trumpets and everyone got scared and they ran away.

Copywork     

Copy “The friendly cow, All red and white" and add a picture narration.

Note the bucket of cream under the cow and the floating apple tart.

Literature

Tell a fairy tale you remember from this term. 

Beauty and the beast! So there once was an old man, a rich man, and his house got burnt so they

found a cabin in the woods and one day beauty had to go to the palace of a beast. And in one day,

he said, you can go but come back here just when I say or you should see your beast dead. And so

she didn’t, she said “oh no, I can’t go back’ but one day she came back and she found the beast in 

a cave and it was the beast sleeping. And later, some dragonflies said “Long may the prince and 
his bride live!” And she turned to ask the beast because she didn’t understand this and he 
disappeared  and there was a prince there. And that’s all. They lived happily ever after.

Mom note: I was surprised she picked this one. Beauty and the Beast was one of the hardest stories we read (for her).  She really enjoyed the story but it is long. She does very lengthy involved narrations and struggles to let details go so we could only read a paragraph or two before she begged me to stop so she could narrate which means it took us a long time to get though. By the end, with a bit of encouragement, I got her to let me read a bit longer and had her focus on the bigger story and not panic about memorizing every single detail. Summarizing is hard so I wasn't expecting her to even make that much progress. She didn't struggle nearly so much with the later fairy tales. 

Tell how the Leopard got his spots, or Moses the Kitten.

Moses kitten was found by the reeds and that’s why they named him Moses. So next time I visited the vet, he was still there and the next time I visited the farm again the kitten was not there. And they said “wait! I’ll show you where he is.” and he was with the piggies. And he’s always there, the end.

Mom note: She remembered more about this story than I did! But what I found most interesting is that she narrated it (both this time and the original narrations) in the first person because it was written that way. The poetry book this term was Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and she's written several poems since which definitely take their style from that too. I knew that narration was a form of composition and that kids would learn style from reading but I guess I didn't expect to see it emerge so soon. Fascinating!

Tell about Boadicea, or, about St. Alban.

St Alban was the first one to die there because he loved Jesus, right? (Me: Right, he was the first Christian Marty in Britain.)Hmm, Okay, so there was a queen whose name was Queen Boadicea and there was another army trying to get them. She lived in Britain. So she said you must all fight and she gave a speech. "And if we do not win, we must die!" And they didn’t win so they died. Because she poisoned her daughters and her because they didn’t want to be slaves. But you don’t think its better to die than to be a slave, do you mom? 

Tell the story of William Tell.

So William Tell was a great hunter and one time, well, William tell was not always happy because there were people who wanted to rule over the country so they tried to take the country. And one king he put his cap on a post, a fence post, and said “everyone who passes this tower must bow down to it” but William Tell didn’t bow down to it. And he said “you must put an apple on your son's head and shoot it off” and so he did shoot the apple and his country was saved. 

Geography

Find Canada, China, Japan and Italy on our scrunch map. Easy peasy!

Find Lake Superior on a map. She struggled with the world map but insisted on using it at first so I reminded  her to find the right countries first and she got it. She found it very easily on our paddle map)

What is the shape of the earth? A circle but not flat. 

Map work

Natural History and General Science

Describe your favorite nature study this term. What did you find?

This was the only question she really struggled with. We've done a ton of outdoor time (I've logged 190 hours since January) but I intentionally kept most of that informal since they are young. And it was hard for her to know what time period I was asking about. She kept mentioning nature things from last summer or even two years ago! Eventually I told her just this spring and she said "When we saw a black capped chickadee in the yard and we learned about it." which I don't particularly remember. I'm not saying it didn't happen, it probably did as we've done a lot of bird watching, just that it wasn't memorable to me. Later on when I was going through her paperwork to pick out a few things to save, we found a couple different paintings and drawings she did and we remembered a lot more of what we learned.

 So this was more an issue with the exam rather than what we did all term. Not sure the solution or even if it needs one. Maybe just mentioning that "This is nature study" would help her know that since I think she's just been thinking we've been playing outside and observing things. Because we've mostly just be playing outside and observing things ;-) But because of that, I wanted to add in another nature study questions so then I asked.

Can you tell me the difference between henbit, ground ivy and dead nettle?

The henbit has leaves going all around and they are separate and in clusters and the flowers are very light. And the ground ivy, its flowers are darkish blueish purple. And the dead nettle has a square stem (and the henbit has a square stem too) but then the dead nettle, its flowers are light and they seem to be turning. They were dark but now they are getting light.

 Tell about "the bully in the old orchard."

The bottom was not pretty white, dirty white and the top was ashy brown. And so the bully was trying to take the nest and he said “It was your nest before, but it is my nest now, you must make another nest or find one” “No it was my nest only!” and finally they just let him do it. He’s a house sparrow.   

 Describe three birds we’ve seen in our yard this spring.

Black capped chickadee – Black on the head, it’s not a woodpecker. It’s small and its white. It has white on it. That’s all.

(Eastern) Bluebird – Blue right here (demonstrates) on the wing and blue on the head. Not blue everywhere, they have some tanish and short little beaks. They are not a woodpecker. But I don’t know how to tell the males from the females.

Downy woodpecker – Downy woodpecker has a little red on its head here (again demonstrating). It doesn’t so south when it’s the winter. And it’s a woodpecker. It has a long beak for reaching into the tree.

Jonah was getting upset he didn't have "xams" too so I asked him to name three birds we've seen this spring in our yard: Black capped chickadee, robin, bluebird.

Foreign Language

     Pick a French song and sing me the first verse of it.

Jonah sang frere jacques and Lucy sang the first verse of Au Claire de la Lune, mostly correctly. She fudged a line or two. :-) 

Picture Study

     Describe your favorite picture from this term's picture study.

Jonah – The horse one. (Napoleon Crossing the Alps)

Lucy – I think my favorite is the horse one too. So there is a person riding a horse and he has a hat and he has a red cape, I think. And there are writings on a rock. 

Recitation

     Father should choose a poem, and two Bible verses learned this term for student to recite. 

Psalm 100 and another verse plus "I'm Nobody" for Lucy and "Celery Raw" for Jonah. 

Singing

Sing your favorite folksong from this term.

                She sang The Star Spangled Banner which technically was from last fall but she sang it                     with such gusto and heart that I didn't have the heart to correct her, especially since I've                     heard her sing each other folk song at least once this week while playing. Next time I'll list                 her options since she really doesn't know what a "term" is. 

Sing your favorite hymn from this term.

         She couldn't pick her favorite so I let her sing both Lift High the Cross and Come Ye Sinners,           Poor and Needy.

Art

Oil Pastel Piece from Artistic Pursuits

We did a bit of Artistic Pursuits but not as much as the fall because Norah was getting less sleepy. I had planned on that but Lucy wanted more drawing lessons so she picked out a few drawing books from the library and did some self studying. I'll let you figure out the topic of the drawing books she picked. 

Handicrafts

 We did paper folding/origami. She still needs quite a bit of help. I think I should have had her practice a few of the same ones more instead of doing as big of a variety. But instead of demonstrating step by step like I normally do, I talked her through one with the book and she managed just fine.

 I think she did great and I'll be back with more thoughts on term 1 overall soon.