Week 9: Slowly getting back into our rhythm

Vacation was great. I came back relaxed and refreshed. The one downside is that almost every bit of school work we did this week took twice as long as usual (or at least it seemed that way). Problem 1: the kids got used to sleeping in a bit and getting up and playing. As a result, I think 8:00 was the earliest we had breakfast this week (as opposed to the usual 7:15 or 7:30). Rather than waking them up earlier since it's almost time to switch off of daylight saving time anyway, I think we'll just focus on getting back to the rule of no books or toys before breakfast just get ready and come to the kitchen. The one small downside is that I'll have to start getting up again to shower before they wake up. (I got used to sleeping in too.) Problem 2: it's beautiful weather outside, and the kids just want to go out to play. We persisted through most of the school work on Thursday, and then I just gave up and let them go outside.

Here's what got done...

LANGUAGE ARTS

The girls have finished memorizing The Arrow and the Song so on Wednesday we began learning Against Quarreling and Fighting by Isaac Watts. We skipped doing Violet's FLL lessons while I contemplate whether to make some changes, skip some lessons, or just drop grammar altogether this year. We are reading A Lion to Guard Us for literature this week even though we haven't finished Little Pilgrim's Progress yet because it ties into our history study of Jamestown. We didn't quite finish today because we didn't get to literature every day this week so we'll finish Monday instead.

For her read aloud time, Violet has decided to take a break from the usual chapter books and read to me from her NIrV Bible instead. She picked the book of Joshua and has done quite well (other than a few names that most adults also find difficult). Since the print is smaller, we also shortened up the reading length from a full chapter to just a section.

We also manage to complete spelling, Jessie's grammar, 3 or 4 days of copywork, a little bit of CW, and Latin. For pictures, we have a page from Jessie's Building Thinking Skills on the left and Violet's copywork of her Bible verse for Sunday school on the right.

MATH

I think the girls spent more time on math this week than anything else consistently running over their allotted times. It's basically been a repeat of our first school week with both girls having trouble focusing because they would rather be playing. I'm sure it will sort itself out in a couple of weeks. Jessie (on the left) finished up reviewing multiplication and division with 6-9 using the IP workbook and was thrilled to start a unit on money today. Violet (on the right) has started a unit on adding and subtracting within 100 so far it is going well. She made it through the +6 key on the addition wrap up with very little coaching from me. It helped that I taught her to play the make 10 versions of pyramid and go fish at the beach last week.

HISTORY / GEOGRAPHY

Geography is still going well. The girls even opted to do a bit of writing this week rather than cut out all of the labels. We finished booklets for Connecticut and Delaware. In the Fifty Nifty United States song we have made it up to Michigan so I'm going to have to put some thought into how we're going to memorize the state capitals soon.

In history, we were suppose to catch up on our lapbook, study Pocahontas, and make a model of Jamestown. We did catch up a bit on the lapbook.We finished booklets on Champlain, St. Augustine, and Roanoke colony. I forget to put the Pocahontas books on hold and pick them up before we went to the beach. We read about Henry Hudson instead, but didn't get around to putting the booklet for him together. I guess next week we'll try to condense a bit. We can do the booklet, timeline, and map for Hudson on Monday. I'll read the girls the D'Aulaires version of Pocahontas for our summary and give them the chapter book originally planned to peruse on their own. Then we can start reading about the pilgrims on Tuesday. We'll either squeeze the Jamestown model in one afternoon next week or maybe just hold on to it for the next time.

ART / MUSIC

We haven't started music up again yet. We'll focus on getting back on schedule next week, and then maybe add music back in the following week.

For art, I went rummaging through Benny's bookshelf and found the book A Little Whale Tale. This week the girls drew the little whale from the story. Jessie's picture is similar to the one in the book, and Violet decided to make hers very colorful.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Monday, we took the day to assess exactly what Benny has learned so far . We played our frog number game. He had only forgotten 3 so we went ahead and added the number 6. For our alphabet egg puzzles, I randomly laid out the lowercase letters. Then I held up an uppercase letter, and Benny told me what the letter was and showed me the matching lowercase letter. He now knows everything from Aa-Ff except the big E. For some reason he thinks it's a better idea to just cover the bottom line on the E and turn it into an F. The rest of the week was fairly laid back. We read a few books. He spent the morning outside with DH on his day off. Friday, he opted just to climb up on my lap and snuggle for awhile.

That's our week.