Our Weekly Amble for March 13-17, 2017

It was an odd week.

We only did Whatchamacallit one time this week. On Monday, R-girl had an Orthodontist appointment (no more turning the key in her expander!)

So, we did our the core subjects – Math, Reading, Penmanship, Latin, Reading – pretty consistently but Whatchamacallit went a little by the wayside. That frustrates me, but I wasn’t feeling great the end of the week and directing that was more than I was up for.

I was incredibly glad that I had done my pre-reading though. Because I knew what the assignments were and could listen to narrations and continue with conversations directing our school from my couch.

The children did a good job with that – even knowing where to find their assignments when I didn’t put them in their spiral notebooks.  What a blessing.

This week we read about President McKinley and the Spanish American War – it was interesting to read about it from a different angle than had been presented in Story of the World a week ago. We also read about the economics of the growth of the United States between westward expansion and the growth of big business. We’d read a little bit about TR’s trust busting in Carry a Big Stick and I suppose that will be a big emphasis in Story of the World 4.

The children are all enjoying the George Washington Carver biography, this week they liked it in particular with the traveling school going to farms and helping communities where they were. They’re very pleased that we’re almost done with Madam How, Lady Why and enjoyed learning about Submarines in Story of Inventions. The end of the Iliad in Age of Fable was another hit. I think I might be looking forward to reading The Iliad for real, now.  We are entirely behind on Kim.

They’ve been working on the Baltic States in their Geography books. Math is moving along nicely; M-girl started a section on time, N-boy is fighting with big numbers, and R-girl is metric conversions, graphing, and such.  Latin is also going well. M-girl finished Lesson 7 and the others are halfway through 4.

The biggest lesson this week was that they all learned to get started earlier and work to finish so they had their day freer. What a blessing to see this understanding. There was even a day when N-boy and R-girl worked together on all their work and finished well.  When they can get along, it’s a beautiful thing.

This lasted approximately 10 minutes. I will take it!

I think most homeschool moms have the fantasy this picture illustrates. Quiet working sitting together.  It can be (and was) short-lived in this case, but it was beautiful and I *revel* in the few minutes of fantasy realizing that I also have to enjoy the next few where }pacify{ takes over. The work God calls us to is work. Life isn’t utopian perfection, but it’s good.

So, I say, even with its struggles and fits and starts, we had a good week of school.