Sunday, January 18, 2009

What We Did This Week

We had a nice, uneventful week this week, History emphasis was on the writing of the constitution. After being anti-reading so far this month, A sat down this week & read all the necessary books to finish out her Jan. reading chart, silly kid. L finished hers as well, but has been working on it throughout the month instead of all in a 2 day period. So, a trip to pizza hut will have to happen in the near future.

I resorted to bribery of sorts (though really it IS a natural consequence) as far as the whining/tantrums over the phonics sheets goes, I was looking through some art options while I waited for them to do various independent parts of schooling & they asked when we could do art again. I told them I'd love to add in some art projects, music projects, etc but as long as we're having tantrums over "homework" (their name for the phonics sheets) we don't have time to add other things in, that at least led to one or 2 tantrum free (over school anyway) days this week.

For our "extra" (for the no-tantrum day) I pulled out the window planter set I won in a blog giveaway before Christmas. The seeds that come with it are sunflowers (not sure how fast those grow & didn't want to be contending w/ sunflower trees in the house before it got warm enough for transplanting outside), basil (which I had just started in a random pot a week or two ago) & a flower of some sort (zinnias?) which would be fine, but I'm hoping to do some serious seed starting this spring & so I'm abit stingy w/ my sun-lit window space until I see how much I use for seed starting. So . . . I pulled seeds out of the freezer instead (fingers crossed they actually grow, they're a couple years old but I THINK have been in the freezer the whole time) & let them each choose one then I did the 3rd. So we have spinach, lettuce & cilantro started (which should go nicely w/ the basil, parsley & chives I started a couple weeks ago).

In SS this week the girls were the only kids there for most of it. One of the teachers, who works w/ dh, had seen the thank-you notes I had the girls write to another co-worker for Christmas gifts, so that cued her in that they can at least semi-read (though actually they could've copied the thank-you notes last year & wouldn't have been able to read the Bible text but anyway . . ) so she asked if they wanted to read the Gracelink Bible text that went w/ the story she told them. They did well & the teachers all ooh'd & ahh'd so they got positive feedback LOL.

I also had to laugh, one day this week we were planning to eat at IHOP but got there & it was a long wait so dh suggested that we go to Chili's, right next door, instead. The girls had never been to, and to my knoweldge, never heard of Chili's before (I won't swear I didn't go sometime back when I was auditing and such but I don't remember for sure). But as soon as dh suggested we try it, A's concern was "isn't everything there spicy?" I thought that was rather good deductive reasoning (if it's called Chili's and chili peppers are spicy, it must have spicy food) for a 5 yr old.

The girls' play this week has included a couple "homebirths" LOL. They've also been dealing w/ "sibling rivalry" since, as they explained to to me, Jeanie (one of their dolls) doesn't like that the baby gets all the attention so she has been being mean to both the baby and big brother, so they have to watch her extra close.

Driving in the car this week the girls re-discovered the Eric B Hare story CDs and are thoroughly enjoying them again. I was watching an interview w/ the current "Uncle Dan & Aunt Carol" on 3ABN yesterday and realized we don't have any Your Story Hour CDs, tapes, etc. Need to look online & see if they're available for download. When the girls walked in while I was watching the interview, at first they didn't know who Uncle Dan & Aunt Sue/Carol (why they changed her name, I'll never know, especially since the interview yesterday indicated that the first 2 "Aunt Sues" were neither of them named Sue either! If they addressed why the current Carol had to use her real name instead of sticking w/ the Sue theme, it wasn't while I was watching) was, but then one of them, A I think, said, they say Uncle Dan & Aunt Sue on our Bible stories we listen to in the car (My Bible Friends CDs) so they at least have heard of them LOL.

Guess that's about it for this week. Next week will be a short week, as the girls & I are going to my parents' (and letting dh have a weekend to get caught up on work in peace) for the weekend. While we're there I'm hoping to get my Eric B Hare chapter books back from a friend who borrowed them (she said she'd give them to a mutual friend I'll be seeing while I'm down there, if she forgets, I'll raid my parents' bookshelf instead LOL). We're enjoying Anne of Green Gables as our current chapter book, but I think since they enjoy the short Eric B Hare stories, they might enjoy the chapter books as well, and would give us Sabbath chapter book reading.

No comments: