We had a calm week and I’m content. We seem to have finally and genuinely settled into a groove. I never thought it would take more than half a year to get here, but here we are. I’ve learned so very much along the way…extending grace towards my girls and myself, adjusting my expectations, taking breaks when needed, loving the process over the schedule…just so many things. Now, six months into our year, I feel we have grown closer, my girls and I. I have more patients with them and they are laughing and we are closer.
Grace loves our new routine even though we both miss Little Hands to Heaven! She drags her bag of books out and brings them to me with eagerness. She simply smiles and waits for me to tell her to either open up her reading book or play a little longer until I can get her sisters settled in with their independent work. I struggled with Grace a bit in the beginning of this year. Her frequent temperamental moods were becoming more and more frustrating, but suddenly in the last couple of weeks she has calmly accepted my need to teach her sisters. Thoughtful consideration and prayer led me to the same conclusion every time: She felt I was pushing her away instead of understanding why I needed to work with her sisters. I’ve been trying to gently help her see this and I think she’s finally there for the most part. She seems to have more fun playing on her own with a variety of toys and learning games. This little computer has been with another family for a few months and she was excited to play with it this week since the last time she had it she wasn’t reading yet!
Beth has started to become more anxious to finish her work each day. While she doesn’t argue with me and seems to really enjoy the work we do, she frequently cheers when the school day is over and gets a dejected look when I remind her of a forgotten assignment. I have no idea why this change has occurred with her, but since it isn’t seeming to affect her attitude during her work I haven’t addressed it yet. Is this maybe just exerting her independence? Since she gets several breaks each day and total only spends about 45 to 60 minutes doing school work I know it isn’t the amount of time!
Rod and Staff came out with a new book in their ABC series this year which completely thrilled my sweet Beth! Just Thinking and Choosing is now one of the highlights of her day. Cutting, pasting and coloring in Beth’s world are as good as life gets!
Cursive is such a beautiful thing. It’s beautiful to read and a lot of fun for my girls to write. There are numerous studies out about the benefits of cursive. I begin cursive instruction much earlier than HOD suggests in 1st grade. I have found cursive to be less frustrating for my girls than print and they love how artistic their handwriting looks. Beth is progressing slowly through Classical Conversations Cursive and really enjoys it.
Beth’s art project for the week was weaving a Native American blanket. I’ve struggled this time around our history books using the word Indians. I’ve talked with Beth about why they were called this because of confused early explorers and explained why Native American is a more respectful term. So now as I read aloud I just replace Indian with Native American. Anyway, we used felt to do the project so she could use her blanket with her new doll from Christmas.
Rose is hard at work with her times tables! She is nearing the finish line and then we’ll start with division. For whatever reason she much prefers multiplication over addition and is doing really well.
Math Rider is a huge part of times tables sine I can adjust to have her practice specific numbers.
Rose really enjoyed the story of Troy. I very much appreciated how Greek mythology and poetry was presented in this curriculum. The history reading explain it as fairy tale gods and imaginary things rather than true, like we know the One True God to be. It is wonderful to know how exactly to present this information to my very sensitive daughter. She has such a heart for the world to know about Jesus and how wonderful of a Savior He really is. At one point she thoughtfully asked me, “Mommy, why wouldn’t they want to follow God? Why would they rather follow fairy tale gods?” We had a wonderful discussion about this which I was more prepared for because of the reading and study I’ve been doing on my own with resources from New Leaf Publishing. I’m glad she asks these questions and I have the opportunity to answer. 
This is a portion of the art project for the week. She made a creative poster about her name and things about her. She had a lot of fun with this! 
Cursive is going really well for Rose as well. For her the main issue is remembering how to write certain letters, but this is getting better gradually. Her written narrations are just lovely and improving all the time!
gracefilledwriter.com 