We've had a GREAT week! Definitely made me realize that I need to keep things mixed up, that "too long" isn't the true whine, it's "too long w/o enough variety", because our 'school time" this week has been significantly longer this week than it has been the last month or so, but the girls have loved it.
We started the Beatitudes lapbook for Bible, along w/ doing copywork for the Beatitudes (if I wasn't spreading things out so that we'd do copywork for each of the Beatitudes we could easily be done the lapbook by now, but that's ok). and the girls pretty much have the song memorized. They really enjoy singing it too, are happy to have me set it on repeat the whole time they're doing their copywork.
For History, we read a book about Johnny Appleseed last week, so this week we did an apple lapbook, the girls LOVED doing that! I picked & chose from the suggested elements, to shorten it & keep it at their level, but they had great fun with it, and especially enjoyed the last day when I cut a couple apples in half & let them use them as "stamps" to decorate teh front of their lapbook. This was probably the biggest "time eater" this week, but they loved it, so they didn't care that it took alot of time. Incidentally, the curriculum recommended reading "Don't Know Much About the Presidents" this week, dividing it up over the days, but when I actually got the book from the library & looked at it, there's a couple pages of information about the presidency in general & then a page or 2 of trivia about each president, in order. So . . . I went ahead & read to them the general info & the info on George Washington & John Adams, and then went on half.com and bought the book so that we can read the rest of it as we get to the presidents, either in our history class or I might let them "catch up" to the coins & then we might read about each president as the new coin comes out, either way it seemed silly to read the whole book right now, when my main goal in this whole history thing is to help them better understand the chronology of it all.
We also started a human anatomy unit, they girls were SOOO excited about that. The first thing we did as tape paper to the wall (had to do it in the upstairs hall, since the dining room has a chair rail all the way around that would keep it from laying flat) and I traced them on the paper (the guys from our oil company were here cleaning the furnace while I did this, and one of them happened to come upstairs to use the bathroom, I'm guessing he thought we were nuts, but oh well LOL) then we started w/ the heart/circulatory system, read about it, discussed some, and then I sent them upstairs w/ crayons to add their heart & circulatory system to their posters. They did a VERY good job (better thanI could've done LOL), so Im anxious to see the finished product when we're worked our way through all the systems.
So all that plus the typical reading & phonics, has kept us pretty busy. They seem to have accepted the more challenging phonics worksheets finally. Having the white board up in the dining room helps, I can "teach" them the phonics lesson on the board & then leave it up there to remind them as they do the worksheet.
Other then that, a pretty quiet week. Weather's been amazing, so the girls have gotten to play outside a bunch & I wasted one afternoon sitting on the porch soaking up the wonderful fresh air (word to the wise, those canvas camping chairs w/ built in footrests, while very comfortable, are almost IMPOSSIBLE for someone 32 wks pregnant to get OUT of LOL).
L has decided that she enjoys laundry too, so now they fight over who gets to do what, sigh . . . must revamp chore charts to have them taking turns at it to avoid the struggle (which isn't all bad, the days that A was unloading the dishwasher AND helping w/ laundry ended up w/ L sitting around for quite awhile waiting for b-fast, so this way I'm going to revamp things so that one can be starting the laundry while the other unloads the dishwasher.
We took advantage of the nice weather & washed the baby clothes while the weather was nice enough to hang stuff outside.
2 comments:
Whatever supplements and vitamins you are taking, I need them too! I admire your energy level. Sounds like a fun week of schooling.
Ha! If you could see my house, you'd realize my energy level isn't all that, in fact it's annoying me to NO END that I pretty much do school, and, on good days, fix meals, and that's about it. BUT w/ the girls I ended up delivering them at just under 36 wks, and had high blood pressure, that I think was a contributing factor & my blood pressure has hovered right on the line most of this pregnancy so I'm paranoid about overdoing stuff & either going into labor or pushing my bp up where I can't have my homebirth, so even while I grumble at myself for being so lazy, I spend a good part of my day sitting and resting, sigh . . . But this past week did really remind me that I NEED to make sure school consistently includes something "crafty" it keeps the girls much more interested, even if I add it in on top of everything else so the "school day" is longer, they handle it all better. And really it doesn't have to be anything elaborate, they were perfectly happy w/ cutting things out & gluing them onto file folders :)
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