Our Weekly Amble for January 18-22, 2016

A New Year should mean a new graphic, right? I loved the green in last year’s, but I think I’ll enjoy the blues for this year.

Anyway, on with the show.

We had a really good week of school. We accomplished quite a lot in our four days of formal lessons and enjoyed Friday fun.

We did Circle Time all four days. We are learning the AO selection for January, a hymn I didn’t know, ‘He Who Would Valiant Be.’ I think the children are enjoying it. We’re also back, with both feet, working on memorizing Romans 8 for Bible memory. We’re about 13 verses in. We’re reading about brooks in the Handbook of Nature Study. Anna had Simply Charlotte Mason’s Laying Down the Rails for Children, and we’re reading through parts of that as a habit study.

Our current poem is ‘The Glove and the Lions.’ When I introduced it in the fall, none of the kids were enamored, but they all seem to be enjoying it quite a lot now. I still love using Memoria Press’ English Grammar Recitation during Circle Time. We’re working on Verbs, now. After grammar, I roll a 12 sided die, and we work on our multiplication tables to 15; I reassigned some numbers: 1 is 13, 10 is 14, and 11 is 15.

I keep forgetting to chant our Latin during Circle Time. We usually chant through the first page of the chapter we’re studying and one other chapter.

We studied a dictation passage, from Madam How and Lady Why no less. But haven’t written it yet.  We always do those on Fridays, and without Friday … maybe studied dictations should have a two-week cycle? Still considering.

Circle Time: hymnal, toys, children.

We read some of George Washington’s World each day. In two days we finished one chapter in our Abigail Adams book. We read the passage from Madam How and Lady Why for the week of the term. I also started reading A Tree for Peter which is on the free read list, but I’m not requiring narrations of it,

That’s the first 1.5 hours of our day.

After Circle Time, they each have a list of assingments for the day. Color Coded.

The children did math each day. R-girl is almost ready to move to MEP Y3. N-boy is working in Y3, near the end of it. And M-girl is making steady progress in Y4. I think our break really helped her, she is doing several pages a day with no errors and no complaints.

Penmanship continues to improve. Writing this reminds me that R-girl needs more pages. She ran out so I wrote out a Bible passage on the fly for her to copy. We use Brookdale House’s Westminster Shorter Catechism Traditional Cursive with Ruled Lines.

We watched Lesson 19 in Latin For Children A. We will finish it someday. Lord willing. They all worked through their workbooks and activity books, too. They enjoy playing Octavian on Headventureland.com.

I’m so very very pleased with how our map drawing has been progressing since we started using this book: Draw the USA by Kristin Draeger. We will continue with this series for sure. R-girl has been struggling with spelling; I think she must see the words as a whole piece and not really notice the individual letters. There’s also something about the putting it on paper, she can spell words orally better than writing them down. She’s actually pretty pleased that I pulled out my old Spelling Power book for her to work through. I know it isn’t very CM, but I own it already and we can work through it quickly and easily to help her.

Music consisted of piano practices for three and organ practices and lessons for two. I think we’re all ready for our piano instructor to return from maternity leave!

We read and read and read this week. I’m trying to quash 8 weeks of scheduled AO into 6 so we can start Y5 after our first break.  So, We read two chapters of This Country of Ours, two of Storybook of Science, all of Rip Van Winkle (which, I found out, my children hate with unreserved hate). They had already read ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’ with Daddy recently (If I’m not home for dinner, they read poetry instead of our current readaloud. Swoon.) M-girl and R-girl read some of The Incredible Journey. (N-boy found it last spring and powered through it before I realised he had picked it up. He loves the story. Would that the girls did!)

I had the two older children do one written narration per day (except the day we did Rip Van Winkle). R-girl did one for the week.

As a family, after dinner, we finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets last week, so now we’re reading Emma by Jane Austen. It might be too soon. It is a hard read for everyone except me.

On Friday, as we have that day off for other activities, M-girl is going to the home of one of our fellow congregants and acting as a Mother’s Helper for her two little girls – almost 3 and almost 7 months. She has watched through the Red Cross Babysitting course online and is now getting hands-on, with-mom-home experience. I have her plan a couple of activities and stories to take with her to do with the almost 3 year old.

She’s gone twice so far and loves it.

Yesterday, before I picked M-girl up, I dropped N-boy off with my brother. He and my nephew went to Engineering for Kids to do a Star Wars Lego class. I can’t wait to hear all about it!