Weekly Wrap-Up - The Week Where Mom Finally Starts to RELAX

Today I'm linking up to Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, and Mama to 3 Blessings. I love seeing what everyone has accomplished during the week.

I'm looking forward to writing this week's weekly wrap-up, just because I'm proud of myself for relaxing with a lot of school matters. I started off the year with a bang - a great schedule, an organized schoolroom, and slowly I'm starting to see that it's OK to sometimes let my kids take the lead with their learning and deviate from the plan every now and then.

The biggest thing I have relaxed is our morning routine. We are still up and working by 8:30 or 9:00, but if the kids want to linger after breakfast that's ok - we have been putting birdseed out to watch birds off the back deck, and it's been cooler in the mornings now so they have been playing outside a little first thing.

Our week really started on Sunday, so here goes:

Sunday
After church and Sunday School we took the afternoon to just relax. The kids next door came over a for a while and I taught everyone some Chinese Jump Rope games. We are studying China and this was a fun way to learn about games from that country.

Monday

Monday was the first day of Miss B's Spanish class. She will take this 11 week conversational Spanish class. I'm very excited about it, and after the first class I could tell she was, too. They did EVERYTHING in Spanish and it was a very hands-on, active class as well. It gives me a little block of time alone with GMan while she is in class, too. We completed math and grammar lessons before Spanish class, and then finished up read-alouds in the afternoon. Miss B has tennis lessons on Monday evenings, so I enjoyed sitting at the court watching her and just decompressing from the day.

Tuesday

This week's Five In a Row story is "The Old Rag Coat". What a beautiful story it is, and it has been meaningful to my children. We curled up on the sofa and read the book underneath a grandmother's quilt which was made by my children's great grandmother. Notice the head, arms, and legs on the quilt. They have wanted to wrap up in the quilt whenever we do read-alouds this week. GMan colored Joseph's Coat of Many Colors quilt squares and learned four vocabulary words: murmur, protested, soot, embarassed The story takes place in the Appalachian mountains, so we listened to dulcimer music (there is a dulcimer in one of the story's illustrations) on YouTube. We talked about folk songs and folk instruments. Then, I introduced the children to Aaron Copland's music, Appalachian Spring.

Tuesday is also the day I give piano lessons in the afternoon/evening, so my husband picks the kids up and takes them to GMan's tball practice. They didn't get home until close to 8 p.m., so it was a late night!

Wednesday


We spent Wednesday working hard in the morning.... lots of math, grammar, spelling - you know, the basics. Anna is learning about mixed numbers, improper fractions, and ratios. GMan proudly finished the first book in his Horizons Math series. We also are reading The Burgess Animal Book for Children. While Miss B was working on some written work for the US Constitution, GMan colored animal pictures because he is making a notebook to go along with The Burgess Animal Book. I found lots of different sheets on the web. We also started talking about taxonomy and found this great guide for all of the animals in the book. This is such a beautiful read aloud for all ages!

We went swimming at the YMCA Wednesday afternoon and watching some more of "Wild China" when we got home. We are finishing China this week and I think we all hate to say goodbye.

Thursday

We may stop trying to do a lot of "formal" schoolwork on Thursdays, simply because we have co-op on Thursday afternoons. We did, however, manage to get a lot of good math practice in, along with our usual read-alouds. I have been enjoying some math drills I found at the Practical Pages called Math Rockets. GMan does simple addition and subtraction rockets, and Anna does multiplication rockets, and some larger number addition and subtraction. I timed them on each page, and then gave them time to color the rockets while we listened to some classical music.

Co-op was great... my kids are enjoying the company and they each have two classes they thoroughly enjoy.

Friday

Ok, this is the day when I really relaxed. I made sure the kids did grammar and math, then went through teaching them how to really clean their rooms.... then we sat down to watch more Wild China and called it a day. I think we crammed a lot into this week, don't you?

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Weekly Wrap-Up - Where Did This Week Go?

I don't honestly know where the week went. We had a GOOD week here.... today we took it a bit easy because I had a friend visit this morning and I was fighting a huge headache. Other than that, however, we spent 8-2 each day doing school. I was proud.

My son's Five In A Row selection this week was The Story About Ping. You can read about our row here. We went to the library and got all kinds of books about ducks and China. My daughter who is nine will also be tagging along on this adventure. I love this about Five in a Row. It is fitting for so many ages.

My daughter's big endeavors this week surrounded our current read-aloud, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. She is working on a notebook to go along with our reading, and we are enjoying mapping Nathaniel Bowditch's voyages on the high seas. I never knew about him, and it has been so much fun to learn.

In science we have been studying the human body. We read the Magic School Bus book about the human body and also watched the video. The kids have LOVED a CD Rom we have by DK Interactive Software: My Amazing Human Body.

The animated character Seymour Skeleton has been a HUGE hit in our house and the kids have spent lots of time at the computer learning with him.

I also feel like we have refined our daily routine. Miss B is doing well with a morning ritual of piano practice, Daily Grams, Bible Study, math lesson, history, Sequential Spelling, and reading. I also added in some dictation/copywork which we are adding to her big notebook.

GMan loves his math and Five in a Row, and also is making his way through the Kindergarten Handwriting Without Tears. He loves to read and is pretty much always reading a book about baseball.

To end the week we had a candy store this afternoon. I am going to try to get in a post about it tomorrow because it was a HIT. We set up an actual candy store with price tags, real money, etc... and the kids "shopped", each of them taking turns as the cashier (which involved courtesy, making change, etc...). It was very fun, but a lot of candy consumption was involved and I did have some hyper kids.

Two highlights for me this week were having lunch with a good friend at a lovely tea room one day this week. My father-in-law took the kids to lunch on this day and they had a great time. I also had a two hour visit with a mentor homeschooling mom today - I am blessed to call her my friend.

This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Check out some other homeschoolers' weeks as well!

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Weekly Wrap-Up - Getting in the Groove

I enjoy reading about other homeschooling families' weeks over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Lots of families are on their first week of school, and others are just a few weeks in. I get inspiration and ideas from the homeschooling community and wanted to participate in the wrap-up this week. So, here's our week in a nutshell:

Monday: Just a general get back in the routine kind of day... the fun thing for the day was learning to play dominoes! We also started Lentil (our Five in a Row title) and my daughter began Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. We are continuing learning about the US Constitution and finishing our science unit about weather. The new thing added this week was an independent Bible study for my nine year old - Jesus in the Spotlight. She seems to like it. Monday evenings are my daughter's tennis lessons, which she really enjoys.

Tuesday: More of the same.... I taught (and Miss B caught on very well) mixed numbers and improper fractions. Horizons Math gets five stars in my book for making new math concepts easier because of the slow and gentle way they are introduced. My son is loving the Horizons Kindergarten book, too. We cleaned pennies for a fun science experiment and to reinforce their introduction in Kindergarten math.

In the afternoons we read library books after lunch, have an hour silent reading/rest time and then on to anything extra (this particular day I give piano lessons 3:30-7:00, so the kids go to the sitter's house) Speaking of piano - Miss B has a twenty minute practice time as part of her morning routine each day. In the beginning she complained, but now I think she looks forward to her time in the piano room.

Wednesday: We continued with our schedule - seems to be working. The first hour and half in the morning are spent with my nine year old working independently out of her workbox (daily grammar, math, Writing Strands, Bible Study, science notebooking) while I instruct my five year old. He and I work on math, First Language Lessons, and our Five in A Row story. I also listen to him read aloud (this week I gathered readers about our flag to go along with Lentil). The kids did thumbprint art for grandma's birthday cards and their own enjoyment.

Tonight was also our family dinner/book party in celebration of Lentil! We may try and make this an occurrence with each book. It keeps us on our toes and is a great way to involve the family in our endeavors.

Thursday: Morning schedule as normal, trying to get as much done as possible so we can go on a field trip tomorrow. This was day 16 of school for us. It is going very fast! I spent a lot of time reading aloud "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" to Miss B and "The Lucky Baseball Bat" to G Man. Miss B also started the Simple Schooling online unit all about dogs (it was the freebie this week and it was great!). We took the dog to the vet, so this was perfect. We sang "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain (per Lentil again!) and had our SQUILT lesson. For recess today it was just too hot so my son wanted to practice pitching and bouncing the ball in the garage. He set a goal of bouncing 1,000 times and he DID IT! I was proud of him - counting to 1,000 for a five year old is tough stuff.

Friday: Field Trip to The Center for Puppetry Arts

Check back next Friday for another weekly wrap-up!

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