The week I successfully cook and school!

You take your successes where you can get them.

I mean, I made this incredibly delicious meal, and you need to try these Rosemary Pork chops, NEED to!

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Reading

Superman fell asleep during silent reading, which amused me greatly (ummm, I hopefully haven’t shared this before).

We got in the next reading level {affiliate link}, and I stopped bothering Jeff with the “Why hasn’t it gotten here yet?” whining, or anyone else who would listen to me. I still would like to know why it had to travel from Dallas (north of us) down to Houston (south of us) to add an extra day and a half travel time before reaching us.

Batman’s forgotten some of the syllable and sound rules, so when he’s hit a word he struggled with we wrote it out and circled the syllables, which has helped him a lot.

 

Writing

Jeff has been playing at writing a novel for years, and we’ve worked together on bits and pieces off and on.  This week he gave the boys an assignment, “You two are best friends and discover an abandoned fort, what do you do?”  Then they talked through what they’d do.  How did their characters meet, what are their interests?  Princess got a similar assignment.  Writing assignments don’t have to progress to writing always, sometimes it’s good to just talk through and flesh out characters.

 

Spelling

I like writing on the dry erase board because it engages more muscles which helps those kinesthetic learners remember more of what they wrote.  It also *can* help handwriting as you have to employ more fine motor control.  That is not evident with my boys.

Our other way of practicing spelling this week was spiral writing, which the kids thought was amusing.  And if I’m completely honest is a lot like they’re normal writing.

Math

We’ve been using our NeuYear calendar for math, and it’s been a big help (go enter the giveaway).  I’d blather on more about it, but that was a whole post, so go read it.

The kids have been progressing merrily along with their fractions, and I’ve been amused at using my tailor’s chalk {affiliate link} to correct it.  Usually if it’s wrong I have them go back and rework the problem until it’s right.  They also rewrite because it’s messy.

History

I didn’t get my usual history post up (or as of my writing this I didn’t maybe I’ll randomly get one up later because I love our Stonehenge activity).

  We read about Stonehenge, and made our very own model Stonehenge out of Jenga blocks.  The kids then tried to convince me we should watch a Lego movie with Stonehenge in it, 30 minutes in and we got a 1 minute bit about it……  Yeah, nice try kids.

For our first co-op lesson we pretended to be archeologists and the kids worked together to put together terra cotta jars my kids quite happily smashed into little bitty pieces.

We learned two things: 1.  White glue does not hold together pottery and 2.  Duct tape works quite well, if not attractive.

We finished up our co-op with the lesson on Noah’s family tree, to show the importance of reading for details and information.  (this was also our Sunday School lesson, the picture is from that, I stole the use of three storage units to get a big enough space that would hold velcro).

 

Geography

 

 

Bible

This is Princess’ Bible study she did with Jeff for the first part of John, the boys did similarly with me, but I love the visual aspect of hers, so I had to get a picture.

We learned about the 12 spies going into Canaan, and the kids loved acting it out with peg dolls.

 

In the random “funness” category (and YES that is a word).

The kids absconded with my map of Israel to create this little play scene.  I just had to get a (slightly blurry) picture.

The kids have been running a “Kiddo gaming” campaign just with the family.  It’s been really fun seeing the kids act out what’s happened, and Princess has been drawing what’s happened for us to keep track of the events.  I’ve been loving her illustrations.

The boys and I have had a running argument about whose shirt this is.  Jeff just sits back and laughs and laughs that we can’t tell for sure.  I may be finally willing to admit it’s theirs, but it’s rather scary their shirts can fit me now.   If a little tight.

I’ve essentially finished up my dress, I just have a few hooks and eyes to put in.  I’ve also made a mock up of Princess’ flower girl dress, which she tried on and declared to be itchy.  I”m washing it, to see if there was sizing or starch that might affect it.

Oh, and I fixed a toy octopus for my dog, who was trying his best to eat the stuffing.

What I’ve learned this week

I’ve figured out two things:

1. I need to include what the math lesson is for the day on my weekly schedule for Illuminations {affiliate link}.  I’ve been used to Math-U-See where you teach a lesson once, and then you work on it all week long.  Each day there’s a different small lesson to teach.
2. I need to look at the Young Learners Literature in Illuminations, as I was printing out my schedule this week, it had some interesting book ideas to go through.  So, that is my homework for the week. The older kid stuff was just too much, so I was ignoring it.

And……  I’m done writing, I need to head off to meet a friend, but I needed this break to regroup my thinking for the day before we headed off.  The kids have been doing math and Princess has been struggling with it today randomly.

 

Linking up at:

All Things Beautiful for Geography and History

Collage Friday