Sunday, January 11, 2009

This Week's Wrap-Up

We had a good week. One of the history books I started reading, Emma's Journal, was just abit too advanced for the girls to be truly interested, so we read part of it but didn't finish it. And I flaked out & forgot to take the book on tape (that was going to be our history "reading" for Fri) w/ us when we left to run errands, but oh well . . .

Phonics continues to be a struggle. But reading is going well. I was especially proud of A one day this week when the new words in that day's reading (she's chosen to read McGuffey's Primer during reading time, L chose the SDA readers, both series follow a somewhat phonetic/somewhat sight word approach that adds a few new words each days and then repeats those words to make sure the kids learn them) were words that I don't remember us coming across before that don't follow typical rules of phonics. One was door (up to this point oo has made either the sound in zoo or the sound in book) and I think the other was roll, I know it was another long O that wasn't phonetically a long o). In both cases she figured out the word on her own based on context. I'm also noticing L is picking up speed as she reads, having to think less about each word.

The copywork book we're currently using for our Bible time includes copying rather long passages (2-3 verses, which is alot for the girls at this age) and then has a short "devotion" on the verses. The copywork is done in the format of 2-3 words per line so that it takes several pages to copy out the whole verse, so I opted to have them copy one page per day & just re-read the same verse/devotion each day that we're copying a part of that verse. An added benefit is that it gives them time to really digest the meaning of the verse instead of moving on after talking about it once, so this has also been a good reminder to me to slow down even as we move on to other Bible options when this one is done.

The girls are enjoying spending more time helping me in the kitchen these days too. We made choplets (a vegetarian "meat" patty that comes in a can, then you bread & fry it (or can do other things w/ it, but that's how we like it) for supper the other night and pretty much all Daddy had to do was turn the stove on, put oil in the pan, and give a little direction. They dipped the choplets in the egg & flour, put them in the pan, turned them when Daddy said to . . . they were quite proud of themselves :) We also had a couple different recipes this week that called for broccoli that I wanted cut into smaller pieces than what comes in a pkt of frozen florets, so they each got a turn at chopping broccoli this week (A struggled abit since the broccoli had sat out some to thaw but was still semi-frozen, L ended up chopping some that we'd had plain for supper the night before so it was nice & soft, easy to chop), they were very proud to be able to use a sharp knife :)

The 3-6" of snow we were supposed to get yesterday never materialized but we did enough (maybe an inch?) w/ some ice on top that Daddy took them out sledding this morning. They had a BLAST! Determined that the hill in our front yard works well for the girls to sled on their own, but as the snow started to melt it got not slippery, so then they tried out the back yard, it is apparently very slippery!! A supervision-required hill at this age, but they had great fun on it till someone accidently ran into Daddy's leg as he was trying to keep them from landing in the creek (that's at the bottom of the hill LOL) and Daddy needed to come in. They were able to keep having fun out there for a little while with L pulling A down the not-so-steep, but too melted to really sled down, front hill on the toboggan like (plastic) sled that has a long enough rope to pull someone on it.

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