Busy Week 8!

This week our fall activities started up with the addition of gymnastics to our schedule.  More activities will be added in the coming weeks.

Highlights of the week include FIL's 70th birthday, gymnastics, and a fun picnic!

We began the week by deciding to ditch math for a while.  Madeline needs some extra time to master her math facts.  She understands the new concepts easily but is frustrated because it takes forever because does not have her math facts memorized.  So I downloaded some neat app's on the iPad and she practiced those this week.  Her favorite is Yodelo math.  I also found a good drill app.

Art was again accomplished on Monday.  The lesson wasn't as thrilling as the previous weeks but the kids still enjoyed it.  They learned about texture.

Duncan made a horse and Madeline made an alicorn.  It's a cross between an unicorn, pegasus, and princess.  I think My Little Pony fans will understand.

The new topic for this week was adjectives.  She seems to understand what they are thankfully!  We also started a new read aloud, Owls in the Family.  It is a cute book.  We finished our bedtime book, Farmer Boy.  Madeline read: Ivy and Bean, Critter Club, and the Velveteen Rabbit for her readers this week.

On Wednesday homeschool gymnastics started up again.  Duncan got to be on his own (instead of mommy and me) and Madeline got to move up to the next level.  We also celebrated Puppy Grandpa's 70th birthday at a minor league baseball game.  Puppy Grandma rented a sky box and it was a complete surprise.

 The night ended with fireworks!

Friday afternoon we celebrated not going to school with the Not Back to School Picnic with our homeschool group.  There were a lot of people there including 4 or 5 new families.  It's hard to believe how many people homeschool these days.

The kids are watching the skateboarders.  I think this represents about 1/8 of the kids in our group, maybe less.

Over all this was a very fun week.  We look forward to a break next week while we visit my sister in New Jersey!

Week 7 in review

As we finished week 7 of our school year I realized that I haven't taken our first day of school pictures for the year yet.  I hope to rectify that this week.

Our week started out bright and early Monday morning as we said goodbye to Eric for 3 days.  He had to fly to Jacksonville for business.

Duncan enjoyed double fisting donuts. 

I decided I needed to vacuum the family room before they started playing in it for the day.  Madeline actually volunteered to do this chore.  I have photographic evidence in case she never offers again.

If I could only get her to volunteer to sweep the floor. That is my most hated chore!


After Madeline vacuumed it was time to start school. We started with circle time.  We learned some more of the Lord's Prayer and more catechism.  Both kids are doing really well with this.  We moved on the multiplication fact review.  Duncan learned about the letter B and number 2. 

After finishing up our regular subjects on Monday we moved on to Madeline's favorite subject, Art.  This week Madeline learned about Picasso's Flowers painting.  She had a little trouble orienting her paper the right way and the instructions went a little fast for her.  I think her picture still turned out pretty good. 

With a little help from me, Duncan also painted a Flowers picture.  I forgot to take a picture of it though.

This week Madeline:
finished up a multiplication unit in math
continued learning about Ancient Egypt
studied about the Tower of Babel in Bible
learned about how birds fly in science
learned about helping verbs in grammar
did some narration and copy work from Caddie Woodlawn
aced her spelling test
finished up Little Pear in our read aloud
finished reading Chalk Box Kid for her reader

On Thursday we finally remembered to put out the bird baths.  We put out 2 bird baths, one on the table and one on the ground.  Madeline is supposed to observe which bird bath the birds prefer.

The kids then decided to wash off the chalk they had made a mess with the day before. I thought it looked pretty as they washed it away.

Week 6: We have ART!

This week we finally got all of our subjects going.  Madeline had been anticipating this week since the end of May when we started our year.  We got so busy last year with all of our activities that Art fell by the wayside.  This year I scheduled things a bit differently.  Madeline will be taking 2 coop classes on Mondays this fall.  So, I decided to not have any school on Mondays except Art and Latin.  We will have all of the traditional subjects on Tuesday thru Friday.  Her classes start the week after Labor Day so until then we will have school 5 days a week.

In Art this week the kids studies Line.  We are using Artelier Art on DVD.  This takes the pressure off of me.  The kids created caterpillars using line. I think Madeline's turned our pretty good for our not art inclined family.

The teacher told them to use the entire paper.  I think she accomplished that.  Madeline is very much looking forward to next Monday for more Art!

We also started Circle Time this week.  I thought it would be good for Duncan to join us for a bit.  I also wanted to add in some Catechism practice and other important to us memory work.  Each morning we'll start off with Bible verse memorization, Catechism memorization, and right now the Lord's prayer.  We then move on to weather, day, and date.  Madeline loved doing that when she was 3 and 4.  Math facts are also practiced during this time.  I'm hoping Duncan picks some of them up so it's less torturous for him to learn them when his time comes.  Duncan then gets to practice a number and letter of the week.  The last thing we do is a character trait.  This week we learned Attentiveness.  I hope some of these things sink in!

I then let Duncan either stay in the room and do some lacing cards or other things to help his fine motor skills while Madeline and I move on to her core subjects.

This week:
Bible: God's Covenant with Noah
Math: multiplying digits with carrying ie: 346 x 4
Language Arts: review of capitalization, continued working on her months book with illustrations,   helping verbs, added handwriting, vocab, narration, and a spelling review
History: started the timeline and learned about Sumer and the Old Kingdom in Egypt
Science: finished studying wings and feathers
Read Aloud: Little Pear chapters 1-5
Reader: Third Grade Detectives #1
Latin: lesson 2
Art: Line

6yr and 3ys check ups

The kids had their annual physicals this week.  They are both healthy kids.  It was their first appointment since last years well check.  That is a record for them!  I pray their good health continues.  Madeline's 6 year stats are 47 1/4 inches and 53 pounds.  Duncan's 3 year stats are 38.5 inches and 37 pounds.  After the appointment I took them both to get new shoes since they were both complaining of too small shoes.  Madeline has jumped to a size 13.5 and Duncan is now a size 10.5.  I bet in about 2 years Duncan's feet will be bigger than Madeline's.

Drama!

This week Madeline has been at Spotlight camp.  She had a ton of fun.  Camp was Monday through Friday from 9am-3pm.  She worked on a play/musical all week and then had even more drama when she got home.  I am SO glad I don't have to deal with this every day during school.  I can not imagine trying to get Madeline to do homework and then hurry out the door for activities.  Today they had what they call a showcase.  We got to see the result of the hard work this week.  Madeline was in the junior group which is for 5-6 year olds.  Here is the video.  It's about 5 minutes long.

Yesterday, 8/1/2013, Madeline also lost her 2nd tooth, exactly 7 years after we found out we were going to have her.  :)

Meanwhile, Duncan and I had a fun week too.  He finally got to go in the tubes at the YMCA since he is now 3!  He also got a lot of mommy time all to himself.  I think he enjoyed himself.