Weekly Wrap-Up: First School Week in 2013

After "just getting by" in the early weeks of December and then two weeks of Christmas Break, I was ready to get back into a regular routine for school once January 7 rolled around. We had ambitious plans, some of which we reached and a few which we didn't, which is fine.

Alas, I did not take any pictures this week. I'll try to be better about that in the future. It's just that, when "school" is happening I am usually busy, you know, teaching. Or at least supervising to be sure the 2 year old doesn't destroy anything and the 8 year old doesn't wander off from her assignment.

Here's how it went down for each of my students:

Polly:
Polly jumped right back into regular Bible reading & Bible memory work.

What Polly did not jump back into: Math. This is partially her parents' fault because we had not been checking her work back in December. So it was getting steadily worse and worse and we didn't know it because she didn't tell us she was having trouble. Polly is intelligent and she hates when anything slows her down from how quickly she thinks her work should be done. That is her deal, not ours, since we do not put a time limit on how quickly her work should be finished.

Needless to say, it was  rough re-entry. So we took Monday and Tuesday for correcting Math from December (and also for, ahem, improving some attitudes). On Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday she did new lessons and had a much better time (and fewer wrong answers and a much better attitude).

Have I ever mentioned that I hate grading? I do. I love everything else about homeschooling but I hate grading papers. So I put it off. (And I know it's not just in homeschooling. Philip used to leave grading until Sunday night back when he was teaching school. Or he made his TA do it. Maybe that's what I need: a teacher's assistant!)

Grammar: Polly did some sentence diagramming (predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives) and wrote a sample invitation. She also did some note taking for Science (she reads a section ofSkywatchingand writes down the important facts).

Handwriting: Polly's been working on cursive pangrams from Copycat Books.

Latin: We had intended to finish Leson VI, which we started back in December, but we didn't. Polly reviewed all vocabulary and did a bit more of the lesson but we didn't finish it.

Music: Polly started back practicing the piano. This is harder than it sounds because 1) If Miss Lili is asleep, Polly can't practice lest she wake the baby and 2) If Miss Lili is awake, she will interfere with Polly's practice because Miss Lili loves the piano and wants to play it her ownself. And no, there is no way to shut Lili out of the room.

Shakespeare: Polly read Measure for Measure from Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children and narrated it to me.

Things we did with Polly & Tigger together:
History: Story of the World 2 Chapter 17 (Knights and Samurai). Both girls read the chapter, we did the mapwork, they both did a wordsearch and decorated their own coat of arms.

Science: we finished part of Chapter 13 (Stars & Galaxies). Polly, as already mentioned, read a section of Skywatching and took notes. Tigger read a section of The Young Astronomer and narrated.

Art: both girls did a picture study (looking at a print of a painting or other artwork and then narrating it). Tigger was pretty rusting on her picture narrating skills but it was good just to be looking at art - on purpose - again.

Tigger:
Tigger did three lessons in Math and five time sheets (subtraction & multiplication).

Grammar: she finished four pages of a book she calls her Phonics book and we did three lessons from First Language Lessons.

Latin: I had planned for us to do Lesson VII of Prima Latina but we didn't get around to it. Maybe next week.

Handwriting: She worked on cursive lowercase g and q. Cursive is not Tigger's favorite activity and I do not require her to do much of it. I'd rather three good "g's" than a page of increasingly sloppy "g's".

Sweet Pea:
I've decided to slow down with Sweet Pea's phonics / learning to read. So we mostly reviewed this week: we went over the short vowel sounds again, all the sight words she's learned until now and we spent all week on two review lessons from our learning to read book. Much less frustrating for both of us.

We worked on her ABC Bible verses (A-G, mostly review).

We did Math four days: weather graph, calendar, counting to twenty, counting by 10s, and making "Some, Some More" stories.

Miss Lili didn't do much school work. She didn't destroy much school work either, so that's a successful week for her. (I kid, I kid. Two year olds are learning constantly. Some of the things Miss Lili did this week: pattern blocks, puzzles, coloring, listening to classical music CDs - putting on a CD is one of her favorite things to do, and having lots of books read to her by me, her daddy, & her big sisters.)

I did much better on the reading aloud front this week. I read several picture books to Miss Lili (including If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for the first time. She's getting better about not ripping pages so we took a chance on moving up from board books).

Tigger, Sweet Pea & I finishedLittle House in the Big Woodsby Laura Ingalls Wilder and started Elmer and the Dragon, the sequel to a book Sweet Pea loves:My Father's Dragonby Ruth Stiles Gannett.

Polly finished this book for school:

And these books, just for fun:

• The Bark Of The Bog Owl (The Wilderking Trilogy)by Jonathan Rogers
• How to Train Your Dragon: A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons by Cressida Cowell
• How to Train Your Dragon: How to Ride a Dragon's Stormby Cressida Cowell
• How to Train Your Dragon: How to Break a Dragon's Heartby Cressida Cowell
  

Yes, she is really into the How to Train Your Dragon series right now. No, it's not exactly High Literature. Do I care? Not much, as long as she's also reading the books I assign her for school (she is).

Tigger read several picture books related to our history chapter and also finished one chapter book just for fun (Flora the Dress-Up Fairy by Daisy Meadows). She's also working on reading All of A Kind Family. We went to the library on Thursday, which is where Tigger picked up the book about the dress up fairy.

We didn't get around to formal logic, much Latin, or P.E. this week. However, we did have lunch at Chick Fil A with the girls' grandparents and cousins, so that counts for about an hour of P.E. or getting your heart rate up or something, right?

Ooh, and I forgot to mention that Gram started teaching Polly & Tigger counted cross stitch. (And Sweet Pea did some "sewing" too.) They worked on that ALL Sunday afternoon. Handicrafts!

All in all, I'm calling it a Very Good Week.

This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris at WUHS.
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