Our Weekly Amble for February 6-10, 2017
It was a weird week.
Monday was a pretty solid day. We had sufficient work and the timing went pretty well. R-girl had an orthodontist appointment, so we didn’t do Whatchamacallit and the others were sending Google hangouts about their schoolwork:
The olders had piano lessons while R-girl and I picked up our grocery order. That’s so convenient. Anyway, M-girl wrote a resume last week – did I mention that? – for babysitting and said she could make easy meals. When pancakes and bacon were suggested, she said she’d not made that – so I gave her the opportunity Monday evening.
Tuesday seemed like it was going to be the same kind of productive day, then M-girl threw up. N-boy and R-girl continued forward, but M-girl rested or slept the rest of the day. Happily, organ was already cancelled for the afternoon, so we just stayed home and quietly.
Wednesday was a scheduled off day because of cleaning, library, and Art with Friends … none of which happened. Art with Friends was cancelled because of sickness and/or travel and Mommy turned lazy.
Thursday … well, Thursday, I tweeted this:
Today, my tolerance to crazy is inversely proportional *2 to today’s crazy. Hiding in my room listening to jars of Clay. #homescoolrealities— dawn (@a_ladydusk) February 9, 2017
They did all finish their school. Finally. Whatchamacallit went pretty well. We did no grammar at all this week, though. Next week. Ah, beautiful looping. It snowed a couple of inches overnight, so N-boy wanted to try out the macro lens on my phone and I wanted to stay inside. Perfect.
Friday was pretty good. The balance of readings was off this week, so N-boy and R-girl only had three. M-girl was still making up from bein sick, so she had five.
Today was a little unusual because everyone had a vested interest in finishing. We had friends coming to do Nature Study. This was our third meeting, so we’re still finding our way. So far, @littledrops5 and I have taken turns hosting and whoever hosts chooses what we do. The first time, I brought down our Nature Pal Exchange specimens and let the kids choose what they drew and explored. The second, Anna had read something about geometric shapes in nature, so we drew things inspired by that. Today, since the AO Nature Study focus is rocks, we looked at our rock sample boxes from the state. I thought that wasn’t quite enough, so we watched part of John Muir Laws on watercolors (we watched not quite half of #5) and tried some of his techniques first. I also used his new book about Nature Journaling (that I got for Christmas) to think about how we draw rocks and see shapes. As the weather improves, I think we both hope to get outdoors and walk/draw/play more.
Last weekend I accomplished all of my pre-reading on Saturday!
While I did so, I also created a YouTube playlist for us based on the readings – things like a whale fluke, a trip to Isfana, a hermit crab changing his shells, how does Gregorian Chant affect today’s music, etc. If you’re interested in the playlist, you can find it here. It aligns with Ambleside Online Year 5, Term 3, Week 5, so I called it AOY5T3W5. We watched some of it as we went, but most of it we actually watched today after everyone was done with readings. I hope to continue to do this work as I go.
We read no Kim at all. I had it planned for during our drive to Art class and forgot on Wednesday. Ah, well.
Math is going well, M-girl continues in review type lessons, N-boy is working fractions and decimals, and R-girl is working on negative numbers. M-girl finished Latin For Children B Lesson 3 today while the others are half-way through Lesson 2. This is somewhat intentional. She needs the momentum of moving faster while the others need more time to practice and learn. I kind of hate that, because I liked having us all together. Everyone does penmanship every day. They only did one day of MP Geography much to N-boy’s chagrin.
We are all working on our keeping habits. M-girl is working to reach minimums and stop. The others are hard pressed to notice locations and mark them. I marked geographical locations, but as I was hurried to finish reading I marked quotes (with book darts which I learned about from Modern Mrs. Darcy. They’re genius.) to copy into my commonplace and items to put in my Book of Centuries but haven’t finished the copying and/or marking even as today. That’s next on my list. I hope to have a picture on IG before I head to bed tonight of my finished work.
What's the form in the last picture? Thanks! Olivia
A form I made. It has three columns – one for the day I assign it, the next for the AO book, the third and biggest is for me to take notes as I preread. It has up to four rows per book depending on how many readings per week. It's two sided. I put a table with the four days per week we school for me to list the day's reading assignments.