Weekly Wrap-Up::August 23-27, 2010

 Wow! I can’t believe we’ve completed our fourth week of school here at the House of Hope!  While I can’t say we’ve really settled into a comfortable routine (as amy in peru commented on my Day in Our Life post, “. . .babies add variety. . .not even one day the same”), I can say with full assurance that no one here is bored.    This is how the week went:

Bible and Devotions

We finally made it past King Solomon and into the murkier waters (if that’s possible!)  of life in Israel and Judah under Rehoboam and Jeroboam.  A bonus for me was that I finally managed to get these two straight in my mind!  We quickly moved past these two and into more familiar territory:  the story of Elijah the Prophet.  The girls really enjoy hearing familiar stories again, so this is good.  I had a moment of inspiration last weekend and decided that one week per hymn from Hymns for a Kid’s Heart is simply not long enough.  We doubled back this week and began learning the words to the other verses of “Holy, Holy, Holy.”  Lulu surprised me this week by showing me up in our memorization and recitation of Psalm 24–she had been reading the Psalm I had posted on our bulletin board in the school room and memorizing it on the sly!    I love that she’s (finally!) excited about hiding God’s Word in her heart, even if it is to show up mommy!    We’re working on verse five now, so we’re about half way to the end of the Psalm.

Reading

As much as I love to read, I’m actually finding the teaching of reading to be rather ho-hum.  I’m coming to view this as basic training for life–something that is a means to an end, not the end.  Lulu is at the point where she can read just about anything she picks up, but we’re still plodding along through the OPGTTR.  We’re to the point where phonics rules begin to get tricky to me–variable spellings for the long vowel sounds, etc.  She’s doing well with it, though.  These are the books that Lulu read aloud independently this week:

• Benny’s New Friend
• Ty in the Sky from Now I’m Reading: On the Go!-Level 3 New Sounds and Blends
• Henry and Mudge and the Great Grandpas (a book which forced me to define the word skivvies for my girls )
• Fancy Nancy: The Show Must Go On

I’m learning that there’s a vast range of skill levels, even among books commonly marked as level two readers.  As you can tell, these books are somewhat self-selected.  What I usually do is pick up a small stack of these readers that appear to be approximately on Lulu’s level when we go to the library and allow her to choose one a day.  Sometimes she picks something out of our reading basket, but she usually chooses a library book for variety.

After last week’s epiphany regarding Louise’s reading skill level, Steady Eddie and I went out last weekend and purchased a new set of readers for Louise.  We purchased Clever Critters: Level 1: Advanced (Now I’m Reading!) by Nora Gaydos.  These readers are colorful, unlike the Bob Books, and the illustrations have a little more kid-appeal.  Louise read the following titles from this series:

• The Hot Yak
• The Big Cub
• The Fox Begs

Yay for Louise!   

We ended the week on Thursday with a rousing game of Reading Bingo. 

Math

I’m finally convinced, after 2,347 hands of Go to the Dump, that Lulu knows how to partition ten by memory and understanding.  RightStart Math is a perfect fit for Lulu!   After reading this thread, though, I’m sort of antsy to add another program on alternating days.  In fact, that was our original plan this year–to use MEP and RightStart.  I chickened out, though, because I just couldn’t anticipate how our days were going to go since we were adding an infant into the mix.  Now I see that it really wouldn’t be doing more in our day–it would just be adding something to our year.  I’m thinking that I might like to try out Math Mammoth with RightStart.  I reviewed Math Mammoth last year, and I’ve read really great things about it from people who have actually used it.  Since I already own the Blue Series, I thought we’d give it a try.  Stay tuned!

History

We learned about the first writing this week in history.  We didn’t read any supplemental books or do anything outside of the Story of the World Activity Guide.  The girls are still really enjoying the maps.  We did make necklaces with Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions.  The girls really loved this!   We used Sculpey, and even after baking it for about 45 minutes, it never hardened.  I wonder if this is how it’s supposed to be, or if maybe our clay is too old or something.  Hmmm.  Any ideas?

The girls were so excited about their new accessories that they wore them to church Wednesday night.  :-)

I had planned to make scrolls with Egyptian hieroglyphics, but my sister and nephews stopped by yesterday after school.  My older nephew broke his ankle at school yesterday and had just gotten a cast put on it.  Apparently, older cousins and casts are exciting enough to make my girls forget their history art project.  They didn’t mention it the rest of the day, so we’ll probably just put it off until next week.

Science

I feel like science was rather ho-hum this week, too.  I didn’t have a good chance to hunt down all the good resources I know our library must have on zebras, hippos, and foxes, so we didn’t have as many supplemental books to read.  Still, Lulu completed narrations on all three animals and Louise did two, all based on what we read from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia and anything supplemental we read. They also categorized them as to whether they are herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore.  Lulu read a couple of animal books aloud and added them to her science reading log.  Our best supplemental read-aloud of the week was Fox by Kate Banks.  This picture book has sweet illustrations by Georg Hallensleben, but it is a story that contains a lot of factual information about the maturation of  fox kits.  The girls really liked this one. 

Language

There’s not much to note here, other than the fact that a.) Lulu can definitely recite the definition of a noun at this point and b.) she was tickled to be able to tell me more about Alice’s Adventures in  Wonderland than the short pieces I read from Writing With Ease for narration contained. 

Handwriting

Lulu has ditched the workbooks in favor of her copywork, narration, and book lists.  We’ll pull them out if I see that she’s really having trouble with something (like numbers–we worked on those last week), but otherwise, we’ll call it good.  Louise is still occasionally working in her workbook, and at four years old, she still has a ways to go in motor skills to have this mastered. 

Art

Honest confession:  I look forward to our art lessons on Thursday afternoons as much as I look forward to sharing my favorite read-alouds with my girls.    We’re still in the preparation/warm up phase of Drawing with Children; we haven’t even made it to lesson one proper yet.  There’s something about doing this on Thursday afternoons that I find relaxing and inspiring, and I think the girls do, too.  I don’t know what it is–maybe because Fridays are our errand/library/homeschool group meeting days, so Thursdays are sort of like Fridays to me, so I’m already a little more relaxed.  Anyway, I love doing this!  These were our warm-up exercises from yesterday:

I also had the girls draw a zoo animal for Sketch Tuesday at Harmony Art Mom, but I’ll wait until Tuesday to post those. 

I’m really enjoying our lifestyle.  Sure, I get stressed out sometimes, but overall, I feel like I’ve been given grace to handle this better than I ever could in my own impatient, perfectionistic flesh.  (Not that I’m perfect by any means–far from it!)  I love that the girls get to spend their days with me and the DLM.  I love that they listen to excellent literature for a couple of hours every day.  (This week they finally got tired of Heidi in audio and picked up The Cricket in Times Square.  Lulu just announced last night that the cricket in the story played “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” which is one of the hymns we’ve been working on!    We are still enjoying Ginger Pye as our chapter book read aloud.)  Yesterday when we got the phone call that my nephew had broken his ankle, we were able to stop immediately and pray for him.  Then, Louise immediately made him a get well card.  I love that because we’re together, the girls get to learn how to respond to such crises.  I still have my moments of homeschool angst, but I’m really happy with where we are right now as a family.  

Thank you, Lord!

(For more Week Wrap-Up posts, head over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.)