Week in Review: October 6-10

Well…the following pictures need a bit of a disclaimer. They look great…and in no way represent what this week was actually like. You see, I wasn’t snapping the photos of the crying, procrastinating, or storming off…I mean, I’m not trying to hide those things, but who actually takes those shots? I can’t pinpoint an issue exactly, just little things. There were some bad attitudes, a bit of disorganization on my part, and unplanned circumstances. We didn’t do anything new or difficult either, but boy am I thankful we get to start over tomorrow!

Preschool

Grace actually had a really good week and was the easiest to teach! We worked with the letter O, which you would think is fairly easy to write, but we struggled a bit with this one. Partly because she wanted to hurry through it I think. We conquered capitol O however by the end of the week!

Reading is so easy for her now and we’re easing through the Abeka 1st grade readers to solidify her phonics instruction. Once finished with these we will begin All About Spelling level 1 to continue with phonics.

We started Rod and Staff’s level E book from the ABC series. It is hard to pace her through these books. She wants to do as many pages as possible, but I’m trying to limit her to 3 a day. When I let her do as many as she wants she tends to hurry and not really try for neatness which totally defeats the purpose. She doesn’t care to color much anymore in this book which is fine by me because she takes more time and is very careful when that isn’t in her mind for the future.

Grace loves reading with me on the couch. I’ve started doing her work mid-morning, around 10:00 am after I’ve had time to work with her sisters on history, spelling, and language arts. This has been a really good plan and is working great for her. Her sisters work in the school room independently and we enjoy a little cuddle.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 6

Beth very much enjoyed her cursive book and we should finish it up this week. We’ll move into joining cursive letters together, probably with a book Rose worked part-way through a couple of years ago. She was excited to get to color van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night, since she studied it in her homeschool class last week. She took some liberties with the colors, but really enjoyed it!

She’s getting quite good at history vocabulary each week. She still needs some help looking words up, but it is mostly just because she gets frustrated from not being able to find the words quickly. Her sentences are really quite good and thoughtful. I sometimes think she is creating an entire story with her sentences!

Math…oh math…Usually this is the subject which Rose struggles to complete in a timely manner, but for some reason Beth just had trouble this week. We did have a new concept, but she quickly mastered the idea. For whatever reason she had a difficult time staying on task. We struggled through, however, and did get finished with all I had assigned last week.

The girls have been working on a model of Jamestown together while I read their history for a couple of weeks and completed it this week. It was a lot of fun for them to color and build together and a wonderful way to occupy their hands while they listened to their history readings.

We began multiplication last year. The concept was mastered, but memorizing the facts has been a struggle. We started back this week with studying the facts and will go through them over the next month. I love that with homeschooling I can do whatever I need to in order for my girls to succeed. Sometimes it means reviewing…

…Sometimes it means trying something new. In addition to the regular curriculum from Math Mammoth we are using Math Sudoku and Math Fun-Flaps from Scholastic to review the facts each day in addition to flash cards. It seems to really be helping and as we head towards more complex multiplication knowing the times tables will be vital to Rose. 

The Fun-Flaps are like those old-school fortune tellers. I remember playing with one once which a friend gave me. When I brought it home my parents explained why they did not want me to play with these from a biblical perspective, and so I didn’t, but boy were they fun! This is a really cool way to practice the facts and there is a type of word problem when you lift the flaps to further review. 

Math was a HUGE victory this week, but history was great too. We studied about the Dark Ages and Vikings. I wouldn’t say it was the most fun part of history, but it was incredibly interesting for both of us. Beth has enjoyed listening in. I’ve been keeping the girls separate until a couple of weeks ago as I read as suggested by Heart of Dakota, but his is working out best for us.