Groundhog Day

We spent just one day discussing Groundhog's Day.   We glued together a Groundhog from a template on dltk-kids.com.  I love this site for ideas.  We discussed hibernation and read a few books on Groundhogs Day.   The one we enjoyed most was Groundhog Day by Gail Gibbons.   It had lots of information about the history of Groundhog's Day and about Punxatawny Phil.   I had George do a story using a story starter from http://www.kidsparkz.com/.  He loves to tell all kinds of wild stories so I thought using story starters or having him tell stories about whatever topic we're doing would be something he'd really like.  The story starter went:  "If I was a sleepy groundhog, on February 2nd I would...."   The full story, as told by Georgie is:
If I was a sleepy groundhog, on February 2nd I would build a very big sculpture that looks like a box of letter H's.  I would make a big dinosaur sculpture and then I would catch him but he was the fastest runner in the whole town.   Not exactly about Groundhog day but interesting still the same.

We did our math and reading in the afternoon.  We did one lesson from MEP since Georgie didn't feel like cooperating for very long.  We did start -ad words in the Progressive Phonics books.    He's doing really well with the reading and I've started keeping track of the words he can read well.  He knows more than just the phonetic words that we've worked on.

I'm trying to decide how strict I should be with doing "school".  On the one hand, Georgie is only 4 1/2 and officially he wouldn't be in kindergarten until September at the earliest and probably not for another year if we planned for him to go to school (with his late summer birthday they don't want him until he's 6).  He asks to do school every day so does like it but mainly wants to do crafts and definitely doesn't like following instructions (see Story Starter above). 

On the other hand, he needs to learn some discipline and how to behave.  I was trying to read them a story (that's fun, right?) and he was very disruptive.  I did not ask him to sit still and listen but instead of playing quietly he sat next to Vicki and I throwing poker chips at the back of the book.  And, a little more following directions would be a good thing.  He doesn't mind doing reading or math but doesn't want to hear stories or learn about our themes.  I guess we'll just keep working on it and see how it goes.