Some accomplishments this week

 

We’ve had a pretty good week.

 

Marrissa learned to ride a two-wheeler.  Kristyn taught her.

 

Matty is pulling himself to standing and trying to climb the stairs.  He is loving solid food.

 

Wyatt has very good letter recognition!  He continues to surprise me with his comprehension of the alphabet.

 

Kristyn decided she hated every single chore in the house and had some how gotten away with doing almost nothing for a while.  We are fixing that, starting yesterday.  I re-instituted assigned chores both for meals and a room for each child to keep tidy.  They are also required to keep their rooms clean.  All this must be done before they leave to play outside each morning.  Exceptions may occur on an as needed basis, and at my discretion.  ( I am sure someone will ask, so look for a post, probably tomorrow, about what each child is required to do.)

 

We went for a walk with a friend, Jacqueline,  and her dog on Tuesday.  We had so much fun; we got very muddy.  And we can’t wait to go back.  We stopped by our friends’ home on Friday afternoon and have decided that every Tuesday we will go for a walk, weather permitting.  We go where we can let the dogs off leash; it's great training for my pup.  He loves it.

 

Cora is becoming a little lady.  She is more and more willing to help around the house, especially with the little kids.

 

Rayna thinks she’s 6 years old.  She so badly wants to do everything the big kids do.  Naps are pure torture for her most days, but without them she is torture on my nerves.  Grandma Irene was here one morning this week and was marvelling how much Miss Rayna was talking.

 

I figured out that I don’t like Ernest Hemingway’s book, A Moveable Feast.  I started listening to it and just can’t get into it.  I am not surprised, actually, as I’ve never really been able to enjoy the classics.  However, I am enjoying The Paris Wife: A Novel, which is a book about Hemingway and his wife.

 

Today we are going to an arts festival; the oldest two girls are performing.  I have not yet seen this year’s number, so I am excited to see it; I’ll try to get some pictures.  Then later in the afternoon we are going to a birthday party.  It will be a fun day spent with family and friends.

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up and the Holiday Plan

 

We had a week of this and that and everything but very little sit down school.  So little in fact that we are revamping the next couple of weeks.  This week was supposed to be the letter Hh and various other math and such, but it turned into a visiting and TV week.  I think each of the older girls did a page of math.

 

We watched some Cartoon Retro. (A TV station of all those cartoons dh and I grew up watching.  Man, are they lame, but my kids love them as much as I remember loving them!)  And we played with play dough.  And we did puzzles.  We decorated the tree for Christmas.  We colored some pictures.  We read a bunch of books.  We went to the library.  We had a Christmas party with Grandmas Irene.  We did some baking.  We took a late night trip to the city to buy a truck.  We watched movies.  We played with blocks.  We pulled out the magnetic dolls.

 

So the math and the science will wait for another week.  The books aren’t going anywhere.  We are learning in other ways.  And for the next month we will continue this trend.

 

Next week we were supposed to do the letter Jj. Well, we’re gonna postpone Hh and Jj until after Christmas.  For the next month we are going to do Christmas stuff.  I can’t wait.  We are going to do baking.  We hope to make some gifts, maybe.  We are going to color and do worksheets.  We are going to read stories.  We plan to go sledding.  Jason wants to decorate outside so the kids will help with that too.  We’ll go shopping for Christmas gifts.  We’re gonna have a couple of special dinners.  There are Christmas parties and choir recitals.  A Christmas Eve service.  There is no lack of activity to keep my munchkins busy in the month of December.

 

Apparently there is no linky for this week because of Black Friday.  I just don’t get the Black Friday stuff.  I guess it’s like Canada’s Boxing Day, but I don’t get that either, so . . . .

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up

 

 

Winter hit Alberta this week.  I guess that’s our cue to buckle down a little and get some book work done.  We’ll see if that happens or not.  I think the kids are doing pretty good with their learning.  Let’s see how the week went.

 

Monday was really good.  I believe that it was Monday that Matthias slept all morning.  I was able to get a lot of work done with the older girls.  In fact I think they pushed me to get more and more pages completed in their character study and science books.  Kristyn really wants to get through this unit on honesty and self-control because the starting page (a page to color) of the next unit has horses on it.  I don’t think she even knows what the next unit is about but it must be good to have horses in it.

Monday is choir.  Thursday is dance.  I know the choir is preparing for a couple of Christmas concerts.  The girls are getting so excited.  As the special days approach I get tidbits of information.  Up until now, I haven’t heard anything about their choir performances.  I have no idea what the songs are, except that they are related to the season.  Dance is the same way.  In the first excitement of dance, I got a little bit of information about their costumes, but other than that, I have no idea what they are learning or performing.  I love that the girls want to keep what they are doing a secret.  It adds to the mystery and excitement for them and for me.

 

We learned some steps to gain self-control and were reminded that changing does not happen overnight.  We talked about those of us in our family who are quick tempered and those who are quite self-controlled.  We talked about ways we can help each other when we are loosing control.  Out of these conversations we have developed a plan for when Mommy is loosing it because the house needs tidying, supper needs cooking and baby is screaming while Miss Rayna gets into everything.  Cora takes the baby because he responds well to her.  Mommy or Kristyn cook supper while the other gets the other three cleaning the floor.  It works foe us.

Next we talked about lies.  We’ve been dealing with a lot of lying (and mixed in, a lot of blame) in our house.  Some of the children have been writing lines – I will not lie.  We read and discussed Proverbs 12:22.  We learned such terms as “detests” and “delights”.  We need some more discussion on the topic over time.

 

In science, we talked more about the second day of creation.  More specifically we talked about the cycle of water and the various forms of precipitation.  The girls found this very interesting that frost was water as a gas that froze when it touched the cold window or the grass.  I love studying this science stuff with them.  I never did really well in any of the sciences in high school; in fact, if I remember correctly, it was biology that almost cost me my diploma and valedictory.  I love being reminded and re-learning about the world around me with the girls.

 

The Letter of the Week was the letter G.  I don’t think the activities went over very well.  The word or theme was gumball.  I think the whole week would have gone over better if the theme would have been gorilla or another animal.  There didn’t seem to be a lot of interest in the preK material this week.  Maybe the children are getting bored of doing the same activities over and over again.  I suspect that after Christmas I will see a renewed interest from Wyatt and Marrissa.  You can see the books we read in my What My Children Are Reading post for this week.  We really liked some of these books; the older girls enjoyed reading them to their younger siblings!

 

We didn’t get as much math done as I would have liked this week, but they are both learning some new concepts and are struggling with them a little bit.  I’ve cut the two required pages down to one page a day for this past week; next week we’ll go back up to 2 pages a day with the understanding that the concepts are harder and may take more time to complete.  Cora completed 3.5 pages teaching about telling time.  She’s getting it but it’s slow going.  Kristyn has moved on to double digit addition and subtraction; she’s learned that she can check her own work, but she doesn’t care to.  She still prefers that I make sure she’s done it correctly.  She completed 4 pages this week.  She is looking forward to learning how to put an 11 in a ones place, because you can’t put two numbers in one position; I think the official term is regrouping.

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up – The Short Sick Week

Okay, so I’m going to really think this through.  I think this process will be so helpful in helping me feel better about what my children are learning and doing each week.  I mean, I KNOW that I teach them and I KNOW that they are learning, but it all gets lost in the mess called life.  So if I sit down and think about what we accomplished and tell all of you out in my “pretend” world (that’s what J calls my internet friends and blog etc).  So, thanks for listening.

 

So I’ll start with Wyatt and Marrissa.  Their letter of the week was the letter F. We read lots of F books – about fish and a pirate Captain named Flynn.  The favorite book was The Pout-Pout Fish.  The favorite activity was the dry erase pre-writing skills booklet.  (Need to buy more dry erase markers, but for now Crayola’s washable markers are working.)  We only did LOTW from Monday to Wednesday because Thursday was Remembrance Day and Friday was supposed to be a day with Auntie Tammy-Lee.  More about those days in a little bit.

 

On Remembrance Day, I had the children do some worksheets about the day and we talked about the war and what the soldiers did for our freedom.  We paused for a moment of silence at 11AM.  The kids didn’t fully understand why but they will over time.  The favorite one was the word search of Remembrance Day words.  They continued that activity to Friday and even got Daddy in on the action.

 

Friday was supposed to be a play day at Tammy-Lee’s but Rayna was up in the night Thursday sick.  I decided that we didn’t need to share our germs, so we stayed home.  They played outside for a bit and played with play dough.  Rayna and Daddy napped while watching Discovery Channel.

 

Now earlier in the week, the older girls got in a “let’s-finish-this-section” mode and we did a whole bunch of work in our character study and science books, as well as math.  In science, God’s Wonderful Works, we learned about clouds and the weather.  We are talking about the second day of creation.  In Building A Life, our character study we are learning about self-control and honesty.  Both of these need to be addressed in our home, so it is perfect timing.  Usually I have to fight with Cora to get her to do the two required pages of math a day.  In one day this week I believe she did 6 pages!!!  Kristyn got through the required pages.

 

So the sickies – yeah.  We had lots of that this week.  So I think we did well over all.  I pray we get better soon.

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up & What My Kids Are Reading

So this week was our “Homeschool Break” week.  We didn’t do anything schooly.  We did a couple crafts that didn’t get done in the last six weeks; we watched too much tv, did too few chores, and played outside.  We visited with friends and just took it easy.  I have been printing like a maniac.  (Really need to get a color laser printer!!!)  I can’t believe the week is over already!  I’m excited and ready to face the next six weeks.  Part of the reason for this is that after this six weeks we start a unit study about Christmas.  (Have any ideas or sites or whatever, send them my way.  I’m making my own unit study up and we are doing the whole month of December.)




So what are they reading?

They are reading some great books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m linked up at: See Jamie Blog (special host for Weekly Wrap Up) and Mouse Grows Mouse Learns.

 

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up and What My Children Are Reading

On September 6th we started school and I think we are mostly into a routine now, for the most part at least.  With a newborn it's tough to have any sort of routine, but we are doing pretty good.  Things will be different when Baby Matty sleeps less.  So the first week I started with Marrissa and Wyatt the Letter of the Week preK curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.   She suggests starting with vowels.  So far we've done A, E, and this week was I.  The kids (all of them) are loving it.  I have a hard time keeping Kristyn and Cora concentrating on their schoolwork, but we've compromised and instead of me doing the craft with the younger kids, K and C are helping them.  It is working sooooo well.

Each day I have a small package of three or four activities, or coloring for them to do.  Three or four days a week (sometimes only one or two) we have a craft to do.  I still need rechargeable batteries for my camera so I can show you what we are doing, but I put the completed activities that I can in a duotang for M and W.  They think it's the greatest thing.  And they have something to show Daddy!

Kristyn and Cora are working in the grade 2 math workbook from ACSI.  They are really enjoying that; we do two pages (sometimes more) most days.  Kristyn is learning to tell time.  I think she's getting it.  Cora is working on geometry and sorting.  In addition to math, we are doing Building A Life (character study from ACSI) and God's Wonderful Works (a science program looking at the 7 days of creation).  These last two subjects, I have to "teach" (read the book and explain the content) them so I try to do those while Rayna is sleeping because she just gets into too much while I'm distracted with teaching the oldest two.  The math is more self-directed than these other two (especially the character study).

We are learning a lot more Bible this year.  The character study looks at the life of Daniel and his friends and has verses accompanying each virtue.  The science has us learning Genesis 1:1-5 so far and later we add more of Genesis 1.  Then the LOTW has a verse as well.  We are using Sing The Word for our LOTW memory verses.  Even Wyatt and Rayna are learning the verses.  You should hear Wyatt say Genesis 1:1-5!!!  He has almost the whole thing memorized!

 

So what have we been reading? We've been reading the "If You Give. . . " series of books by Laura Joffe Numeroff because they start with the letter I.  We've read about iguanas.  The book we've really enjoyed the most though is Dr Suess's Green Eggs and Ham.  We had it out for the week we did the letter E, but Wyatt wasn't ready to give it up yet.  We read it over and over and over.  I just returned it today.  Time to find a new bedtime story.  Rayna received Silly Sally as a gift from the library.  It's so silly.


Cora said to me this week, "I LOOOVVVEEE reading!"  YAY!  I'm so glad.  She's reading Junie B. Jones books.  She goes through a couple a week, I think.  I may have to have her keep track because I'm not reading them, nor am I keeping track of the ones she gets from the library.  The other day she told me she was up until after 11 reading.  Sound like anyone you know, Grandma Johnny?


Kristyn is not a reader, yet.  She may never be and that's okay.  However, I am going to be making some changes I think and will be requiring daily reading - silent and reading aloud.  I'm just not sure how to work it into our day.  I've started reading our read-alouds at lots of different times of day, but the silent reading is tougher.  (Our current read-aloud is the Little House series - book 2.)


I am reading lots too.  I am currently trying to get through Bringing Up Boys and The Read-Aloud Handbook.  Those two are my focus right now.  Also I'm working on a few others that you can see in my Fall Into Reading 2010 post.


Striving to learn and live God's purposes,

Weekly Wrap Up

Ok, so this is my first weekly wrap up.

Our sit-down schooling was not much to speak of this week, but we did lots of stuff.  Throughout the summer we are mainly focusing on math, reading, life skills and character studies.  So I think we covered most of that.

This week, C started her grade two ACSI math workbook.  She is thrilled to be working in the same book (though a little behind) K.  K is really starting to get the concepts and make lots of connections from the grade one material to what she is learning now.

I haven’t seen much reading from K these days, but I can’t keep a book out of C’s hands!  This reading thing is seriously interfering with her day to day life and chore requirements!  Every time I turn around she has picked up a book.  She came late to supper tonight because she was using the toilet and reading!

Life skills include learning what is involved in really keeping a room clean.  K is working on her bedroom and the bathroom.  (She’s not keen on the bathroom assignment.)  C is working on her room (shared with M who is helping her with it) and the kitchen.  Each day they have 3-4 things in each room that need to be done.  I’ve printed them up a little booklet each with their morning routine, laundry details (each has a laundry day), “extra” room tasks and their evening routine.  They enjoy having this book to refer to each day.  I guess it’s a mini-control journal.

Our character studies curriculum is called Building A Life.  They enjoy the content, but not all the writing that is required.  I have moved to either writing the answers for them, after we discuss the questions / content, or just leaving the lines blank having discussed what we would write.  I think in a year or two, maybe less, they will be more inclined to write.  At least I hope so.  Our current unit is on thankfulness and orderliness.  Watch for a “newsletter” to come soon.  We are making good headway this time.

That’s about it.  The rest of our learning was living life!  We had a birthday party.  We had the last dance class of the year.  We went for a drive to fix Daddy’s truck.  We went out to eat that day too.  We spent time at the park, went to the store a couple of times.

 

You can join in the fun of sharing about your week of learning (it’s not just for homeschoolers) at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers link up.

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,