Company Girl Coffee - Homeschooling and Reading Again!

Well, it's been a while since I had coffee with the Company Girls. Have you read the Company Girl Story? I'll be telling it to my girls because they are forever asking each other to go with them to the basement. We have a "furnace-kicker-man" down there that can be a little scary sometimes. The bathroom, kids' bedrooms and kitchen are downstairs so we have to go there often.

I haven't been doing the Small Things to make my home a sanctuary. It's really been a struggle, so tonight I set up a start up tab for Home Sanctuary; now when I load up Firefox I'll see it first thing and I'll be more likely to participate.

Anyway, on to the business and busy-ness at hand . . . .

So what have we been reading? Here are just a few of the books we had out regularly this week:

1. Beautiful Mess (Diamond Rio)
2. One Year To An Organized Life (Regina Leeds) - did you know she has a new book coming out in December???
3. Great Games (Matthew Toone)
4. Tut's Mummy (Judy Donnelly)
5. Mummies Made in Egypt (Aliki)

So what have we been learning?

• We are starting the trial of Tapestry of Grace. We started by learning a little about Egypt. We are waiting for the books to get here from the library. If we like the trial (and maybe even if we don't) we are going to purchase Year 1 Unit 1 and give it a good shot. I think we'll love it - history and reading and hands on.
• We got our character studies books this week and are digging in right away. The Bible person we are going to be learning about is Daniel. Our books are called Building A Life. So far we've learned about Daniel and his friends being taken from their country and why. We've learned about blueprints and created a blueprint of sorts from our imaginations.
• We are learning about fractions and geometry in Math. We won't be done our math book by Christmas like we wanted to be, but we won't be too far off. Before spring we'll be starting the next one.
• The girls requested to learn handwriting a while ago but it was a little too difficult at the time and got put aside; we've pulled it back out and they are loving it.
• K really took to her journal about a month ago and hasn't quit. I require them to write at least two sentences, the date and to draw a picture showing what they wrote. I have seen incredible progress in both girls.
• K has had some extra instruction from our friend Mo and is improving with leaps and bounds. He has a way of teaching them that she just "gets". I don't mind either because she and I can clash heads something terrible. I can tell her something and Mo can tell her the same thing; then she'll do it. CJ doesn't respond quite the same to Mo and is better with what I tell her to do. It's great though, because one of Mo's constant reminders is obedience to Mom and Dad.
• Doing our chores has kinda fallen by the wayside, but this week we've picked it up again and the house is coming back together. The program I use is Let's Clean Up. It's free to try (for a month, I think) and inexpensive to buy (under 10 dollars US). I've used it 95% of the days since I've had it. I didn't even wait for my trial to end before I purchased the program. Easy to download and install. Easy to use.
  

Thanks for stopping by for coffee and an update on our reading and learning.

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,