Weekly Report for September 9-13, 2013

We had a better week. Woohoo! Well, we had a better Thursday through Friday. But, when the end of the week is good, it seems like all of it was better, you know?

Part of the reason it was better is that I remembered a couple things. First, R-girl is SIX. And only a young six, at that. Whew. When M-girl and N-boy were six, I sat with them and did their work with them, one on one. They are, in general, more focused than she is. Rotating around her was not working. She was not handling me starting her on something and walking away. The other two have enough things they can work on by themselves while I work with R-girl (and I can help them as needed) like piano and typing practice and reading. R-girl is completely capable with direction and redirection and redirection (and a few handstands on the couch for good measure). She is doing second grade math and reading chapter books, and I need to remember that she is doing great things while she is SIX.

I also remembered that I got a big “Back to School” kick that the kids didn’t get. My expectations re-upped and theirs didn’t. My attitudes as the mom affect my perceptions of how our days go as much as or more than the reality of how our days go.

Now that I’m done preaching to myself … I’ll tell you about our week. And, I will say despite the above, that I believe it was objectively better and not solely because of my changes in attitude.

Circle Time was better. We did three days of Circle Time, despite planning four. Tuesday was a late night with soccer and going out to dinner, so I let the kids sleep in a little bit and we watched some local street unpaving work, too. During Circle Time this week, we’ve sat at the table and I’ve allowed the kids to color or draw or write, and keeping their hands busy has helped them keep them to themselves. I hate to do that, but I like Circle Time being calm and easy.

In Science, we read about plate tectonics, mountains, and how mountains are formed. We read and talked about three lessons.

It was a reading week for History, and the children read biographies of Reformation heroes like Martin Luther, Lady Jane Grey, and John Calvin.

In Math, everyone did five lessons. M-girl finished working on the measurement and bar graph section and today began working on averages and probability. N-boy is working on division with remainders. R-girl finished up her section on measurement and began some more addition review.
For Logic, M-girl and N-boy worked through three Crypto-quotes Mindbenders (the jokes are pretty funny) and R-girl did two Mindbenders.

For Literature, M-girl started Rabbit Hill. She’s liking it a lot. She and I watched the Anne of Green Gables movie together and enjoyed it. N-boy continued with his abridged Pilgrim’s Progress. He’s enjoying it. R-girl keeps giggling because she’s reading Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
They did narrations and dictations from this reading.

N-boy and R-girl are somewhat synced in Grammar, both learning about conjunctions and serial commas in the last couple of days. N-boy learned to diagram them.
We all watched Conjunction Junction (my favorite of the Grammar Schoolhouse Rocks episodes) when R-girl learned about conjunctions, and then that was N-boy’s lesson too! R-girl also learned about Interjections! this week. M-girl is working on capitalization rules and proofreaders marks related to capitalization. Good stuff.

For Latin, R-girl completed a lesson about adverbs and learned some Latin adverbs. N-boy started working on his first five verbs and nouns in Latin for Children. He made his flash cards for the lesson and did two of the workbook pages.
M-girl made flash cards and played around on Headventureland.com. She needs to get moving on her lesson book.

We had two piano lessons this week; one was a make up lesson. N-boy finished his Level 2 book. R-girl worked on penmanship (practicing her letters) and Explode the Code for spelling. N-boy and M-girl continued practicing typing at NitroType.
They also worked on several states in their Memoria Press workbooks. All three children played a couple “10 Days in” … games (Europe and Asia, I think).

Today, we had something new. There’s a local Homeschool Book Club at the library and it’s starting up for the year. The theme this month was “Book to Movie” so each kid chose a book we’d read and a movie we’d seen to talk about it. M-girl did Anne of Green Gables, N-boy did Alice in Wonderland, and R-girl discussed Robin Hood (Disney’s). That was fun and we’re looking forward to next month’s gathering where we’ll be talking about Science: The World Around Us.

Soccer season has started, too, so we’ve had practice and/or games almost every night this week.