Weekly Wrap-up: The Outdoors Version

On the 1st day of Spring it snowed......
On the last week of March it was summer.....

Not sure what happened to Spring but maybe we'll see it yet.

The temps read in the low 80's most of this week so we did light schooling in order to enjoy some extra outdoor free time. You never know how long it will last so I like to take advantage of the sun and warmth when able.

We are winding down our 2nd term of our school schedule and will be missing our beloved Little Duke but I'm excited to begin reading the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood!
In our History book "Our Island Story" we have been reading about the battles in the Hundred Year's War, this is written from a British perspective so Ali and Tom have been cheering on the English army in the battles with the French. I will be interested to see how they will react when in term 3 we will be a French perspective through Joan of Arc's eyes.


We are still focusing on Living Math through books I've snagged at our Library.
Our favorite this last week being "Math for All Seasons". Ali and Tom had already looked through it but we had a good time solving the riddles and looking for faster ways to figure the problems out.

 
We also picked up some math drills again this week and continue doing mental math informally. Next term I will use Ray's arithmetic more fully and we will add Miquon Math back into our routines.

Wes wanted to do his school so we pulled out the Cuisenaire Alphabet book for him to try. He is a hand-on learner and really enjoyed working these pages.

Pleased with his work on the "A" page.

Our Cecropia Cocoon in a jar....waiting to see if it will transform into the moth.




To close out our week we had a Fool's Day meal. All enjoyed the time and it will be a tradition to carry on for many years to come.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Mud & Bugs Week 20

It's still wet.  And muddy.

It's supposed to be APRIL showers not March!

But it is getting greener and since I banned carpet from my main living areas in our house years ago I really don't need to complain. The crawling baby complicates things but at least my floors get mopped a whole bunch more than normal.

This week we got caught up......almost. One scheduled chapter in An Island Story got left behind but it's short so we should be able to get it in this next week.

Mr. Dad has every other Friday off of work right now and this past week was a free Friday week so we did a light school day and then visited the Insect Zoo nearby. Originally we were supposed to visit the zoo back in December after finishing Term 1 and a 12 week insect focus, but it just didn't happen. Better late than never though.

Is there anything cooler than huge insects that freak your sister out!

Ali found an insect that didn't "freak" her out.

Up close and personal

Hungry anyone??

Weaver Ant Eggs, preserved Grasshoppers, preserved Silk worms, preserved Mole Crickets

Yes, these are for eating!

Of course, we can't have an insect zoo without some mind-numbing insect movie!!!! Heaven forbid the children actually learn without being glued to a tv. 

Playing pretend adventures with large bugs.

Willy loved the dark room with the flashlights and spiders!

Sadie was just happy to be on the floor.

My favorite was the walking stick displays. They are in there.....can you see them?

Wes liked this snake that one of the employees kept at the zoo.

We finished listening to Burgess Animal Book this week much to the delight of Tom, and Ali's disappointment:)
We also made it through all of the long chapters in The Little Duke so were able to get current with those readings as well. Tom and Ali have struggled off and on with narrating from this book but as we have worked to slow down on it we have really enjoyed the adventures of the Little Duke (Richard of Normandy). I think we will miss him but next in line is Joan of Arc so the middle age adventures are sure to continue.

This week I did well with getting math done daily and moving forward in that and incorporated a couple of living math books during Circle/Morning Time which created a lot of discussion for the rest of the week.
By the way do you know what a googol is? I didn't until we read On Beyond a Million.

Along those lines there is a great group on yahoo for living math and in the files is a looooong list of living math books that are sure to please both parent and child. We have read several and will be working our way through the list for quite awhile.

I'm working to set up and use a workbox type system this next week and concentrate on the habits of attention and obedience during school time for all of the kids. Hopefully I'll be able to report some progress or success along these lines next week.

Weekly Wrap-up of Week 19

We've had a long, short, crazy, normal week around here.
I'm sure you know what I mean:)

We spent a long weekend at my parents house and visiting family and arrived home late afternoon Monday but since I had made a quick trip to the library before we left I was stocked up with good audio books to listen to while driving. We caught up on our chapters in Wind in the Willows and hubby especially enjoyed the chapter on Mr. Toad.

Unfortunately a trip like that pretty much wipes me out and the rest of the week I've been trying to catch up on sleep, laundry and dishes and trying to get the smoke smell removed from my poor oven after a seriously gone wrong oven clean involving lots and lots of choking smoke filling our house and necessitating a removal of all children for a few hours. (note to self...do NOT clean the oven in the winter, do NOT spill cream into your oven)

So let's see.....we finished reading Tree in the Trail last week and started reading Seabird this week. I printed off a couple notebooking pages and we kind of sort of filled them out. I definitely need to plan this ahead so it doesn't take so much time and let the kids do the research on their own or frankly I just need to forget this extra step.

Due to tiredness and lack of motivation we didn't get much of the foundational subjects accomplished, like math, phonics and copywork but just keeping up with reading our books was enough.
Thankfully the weather has been wonderful all week so we've gone for a few walks and the kids have spent tons of time digging, running, climbing and playing in the yard. A blissful break from the cold although it has included plenty of mud.

On Thursday Mr. Dad loaded the upper 5 kiddos and took them on a "mommy needs a break" trip to a local park. This is more of a nature park that runs along a couple of creeks so of course they had a muddy enjoyable time:) They did explore around and found horse, dog, and coyote tracks and received an impromptu lesson on following and identifying tracks and of course told it all back to me in various forms after returning home. I was especially impressed with Wes (5yo) who drew a picture of the horse tracks.

All in all....we made it! The week is over and it's on to the next thing...until Monday.

I'm rethinking our book schedule and will probably be cutting Pilgrim's Progress out since we will be covering it again next year. I may look into using Pilgrims Progress told to the Children or just take the audio version that we have along with us on some trips. I get the most complaints from this book but I know good and well that they do really enjoy it. I think it would work better for a longer listening period than restricting how much we listen to to keep on schedule. Maybe I'll just slip it in during Quiet Time one of these days:)

Week 9 Wrap-Up

Combine sick baby, potty-training toddler and time change in the same week and to be honest school takes a bit of a back burner. We were able to get some done every day but not all. Thankfully I'm really too tired to worry about it and since we did keep up with our weekly reading schedule I won't fret about what wasn't finished.


The weather this past week has been simply amazing! Sunny and warm, so we have spent many, many hours outside playing. We have 2 large sycamore trees in our backyard and their leaves are simply huge so make wonderfully large leaf piles to jump into. We have yet to make it to the local arboretum for some exploring since Sadie was born but maybe it will happen this next week.


Ali and Tom are getting the hang of Miquon Math and seem to be enjoying the format of the books. Emi is exhibiting more staying power with her math and phonics and is still making rapid reading progress.

We enjoyed listening to the newly purchased Pilgrim's Progress mp3 cd for our weekly reading and I think the kids will be able to get a bit more from it than before.


We spent a few hours at a local city park one afternoon as well.



Nothing exciting or extremely note-worthy at least that my sleep-deprived brain can remember:)

Week 4

So I'm a bit late posting this but I guess, better late than never.

Last week was a bit rough, mostly my fault for staying up too late for several nights (C. S. Lewis Space trilogy is just too good!) and not resting during the day. But we made it through with only a little bit of reading to catch up on.

Our fav thing of the week was finally getting the timeline up on our hallway wall. Everyone has enjoyed looking at the pics and dates and can't wait for Fridays when we put any new ones up.


I had 1 set of timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods (yellow lines) and then copied that format and made the rest of the dates myself. I used different colors for each of the different time periods and followed the measurement guidelines given by Terri at Knowledge Quest.

I spent some time before school started going through each book for Year 2 from Ambleside and made my own timeline cards. Most of the info was taken from Wikipedia and didn't take long at all. Someday when I figure it out I'll make it available as a download.

Everyone enjoyed browsing through new library books and we've been reading some of them during circle time.

Emi worked on her reading skills using Bob Books. She is making progress but I'm finding it interesting meeting her needs. She is a very quick learner which means she gets bored easy. She is also a young 1st grader so some things take a bit longer for her to get figured out simply because she lacks the patience to learn it. I did find some great resources for reading practice and phonics work here and for the most part they have engaged her a lot better and spurred her on to try harder. I'm also planning on ordering this adorable reader for her to gain more confidence with.

We've been using Tanglewoods Corebook Health & Safety guide for a weekly focus and this past week was Tooth Care. We read some books from the library and talked a bit about keeping our teeth healthy and then of course we all had to practice it.



Over the past weekend I had a crisis about math study and was concerned that I was focusing too hard on drill work and not enough on math concepts, so I spent some time re-reading what Charlotte Mason had to say on the subject and then going over the links given on Ambleside Online. I decided that I just needed to strive for better balance than I was giving so am currently trying a rotation during the week using Calculadders, Math-It and Quarter Mile Math for drill work; Miquon Math and Family Math for mathematical concepts and Ray's Arithmetic for well, arithmetic. So far it's working o.k. I just can't quite check out of teaching like I'd kind of like to do:)

Don't forget to check out more great posts HERE!

Week 3

Week 3 has come to a close, mostly. I'm still in the process of getting our wall timeline put together, I have the people printed out and ready to mount and finally today got the date strips printed out so maybe tomorrow or next week we will actually get all of it posted on the wall.
Since I'm new to posting our weekly wrap-ups I didn't grab the camera until today so my pics are fairly limited.

Highlights:
Seeing our monarch chrysalis turn into a butterfly!
Playing battleship for math lesson.


We are starting to get into somewhat of a routine around here although not as consistent as I would like. This week we ran late everyday but it still worked out well and I felt more relaxed by spreading out the lessons than trying to cram them all in during the morning hours.
Ali and Tom are doing well with their "daily vitamins" i.e. Calculadders, but we've had to start back at the beginning using Math-it. I'm not using a textbook for math until they have their addition facts down cold and are able to quickly add large numbers. I plan on using the shortcut adding methods suggested in "How Stevie Learned his Math".


Gathered around for circle time

I'm still working on streamlining Circle time and making it more enhancing for the younger kids and will hopefully have things in better order next week.

Egg-citing Levitation experiment......it worked!

Experimenting with different density liquids

It took a bit of help but they did get the concept of battleship and were really enjoying themselves until they bumped their boards and lost the pegs.


Copywork using Italic Handwriting from Penny Gardner

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