Greek Mythology w/ 7 year-old Rebecca-Orpheus' Lyre

Reunited and it feels so good!

There are some things in life that just go together...chocolate & graham crackers, peanut butter & jelly, ham & cheese...Rebecca & Tamara.
We are the yin and yang of private lessons.

After a short stint in New York, Rebecca's mom rang me about a week and a half ago and asked if she could restart private lessons with me. It was such a pleasant surprise as they'd planned to stay in the Big Apple for good. I could barely let her finish her sentence before shouting "YES! OF COURSE!" into the receiver. Yesterday was our first lesson of the new school year.

Now keep in mind she's 7 years old as you read on, and I think you'll understand why I jumped at the chance (and always will) to keep facilitating her learning experiences, and letting her facilitate mine as well.

So when she showed up, the first thing we did was hug for forever, and then I showed her around.
"Do you like it?!" I asked anxiously.
"Love it." she replied.

I showed her the truckload of books my mother just sent over from the states. Chapter books. (love you mom!) I told her I the first thing I wanted to do was start a Book Reading List with her so we'd have a focus of what books to start with for leisure reading.

So she perused the books and made a chart with the headings "Yes",  "Maybe", and "No"

 "I really like The Magic School Bus series," she told me.
"Really?!" I shrieked and ran to our resource room, "I've got some!"
Her face lit up as I handed her two books from the series. "You should be a teacher librarian," she started, "not just a teacher. A teacher librarian."
"That's the best idea I've heard all day," I said.

There were definitely some classics in the books my mom sent...

I remember reading this in third or fourth grade. Maybe even both.

Talk about a throwback

 She finished her list of 10 books and giggled, "I don't have anything written under No!"
Then we moved along to our poem of the week entitled "Catching Cold"

She highlighted the rhyming words and words she didn't know...
then we added all that info to her schoolhouse notes for the day.

 "Alright," I said as we finished up the poem, "now we'll do something called a Quick Write. I'm gonna give you five minutes, and I want you to write about a time you had a cold."
"Can it be a poem?" she asked.
"Of course!" I answered.
And exactly four minutes later...

this kid.

 We moved along to our book of the week. When I first saw the Greek Mythology series from Barefoot Books (we carry them at The English Schoolhouse by the way), I immediately thought of Rebecca. The books are completely her style, both illustration and text-wise. I even saved the free poster they sent me for her.

I let her choose which book from the series to start with

and I ain't afraid to go to Webster online when I'm unsure about pronunciation
We both practiced saying
"Yu-ri-de-seee" while reading "Eurydice".
If you're Italian and reading this, I know what you're thinking! "U-ri-dee-chay"
You say tomato, we say to-mah-to.

We read the first 2 chapters because we didn't have time to finish,
and I caught her trying to peek ahead more than once.

 Some of the great vocab words she learned include funeral, sorrow, lyre, to weep, and to shuffle.
We ALWAYS make a craft related to the lesson. It was a toss up between Orpheus' lyre and the snake that bit and ultimately killed Eurydice.
She went with the lyre.

I whipped out our glue gun

and Rebecca chose pipe cleaners that held some significance according to her...
light tan represents the seal
the red and yellow represents the snake that bit Eurydice
white and black stripes is for zebra
orange and black stripes for tiger
and dark tan for lion

a little bit of glue here, some tape there, and a paper plate painted by Rebecca here...
and you have yourself a good looking lyre.

and some even better looking homework