The Week at Home

Yes, I’ve been complaining about how busy I have been. I am happy to report that Cross Country is finished! As a result, I have stayed home completely 2 days this week! What a blessing it has been. I feel almost back to normal, whatever that might be for a 30-week pregnant, almost 40 year old, homeschooling mother of 4.

So what did we do?

Actually nothing earth shattering.

We had our first book club meeting on Tuesday. We like to start simple, so for the first meeting, the kids presented an oral book report on their favorite book they read over the summer. My daughter (almost 11) wrote a very good report on Heidi. Like most everything else, she sees the task and goes and does it. She’s really a sensible kid. I’m not saying that she never complains. What is more likely to upset her are assignments where the expectations are unclear.

My son (12-1/2) struggled mightily with his report on The Toothpaste Millionaire. How much detail should he include? In the past he’s not told enough of the story. This time he couldn’t figure out where to stop. And adding his opinion on to the end of the report? You’d have thought I’d asked him to build a full-scale model of the Empire State Building with toothpicks! I couldn’t help but laugh when he came up with a syllogism for why he liked the book. I can’t remember it exactly (I made him change it.), but it was something like:

1. I like good books.
2. This book was good.
3. Therefore, I liked this book.

I guess at least he’s learning something in Introductory Logic. Which, by the way, he finally got back to this week. My husband is the one teaching that class and it has been several (or 6, but who’s counting?) weeks since they had done a lesson.

In other highlights, my son and I did 4 experiments in Apologia General Science this week!

My daughter did wonderfully on her Unit 1 test in First Form Latin. Oh, how I love that Latin curriculum! The systematic organization makes me so happy. Ironically, it would be a terrible fit for my son. He’s continuing with Latin Alive. He took his Unit 6 test in Year 1. Only 1 more unit to go before we have to shell out $100+ for level 2. (We’ve decided we’re springing for the videos this time.)

Other highlights (or not):

I reminded my 8 year old son 5285 times that when there is one consonant between two vowels, the consonant usually goes with the second syllable so the first vowel makes the long sound. We also managed to get through 2 entire pages in Math Mammoth 2A  this week. (and we worked on it EVERY day!) I’m still not sure he understands it. It was on subtracting to get to an even 10, then subtracting the rest from that even 10. For example, for 13-7, think 13-3 is 10. Now I still need to subtract 4 more and 10-4 is 6. So 13-7=6. The abacus got a workout this week.

Little One announced at dinner tonight that she had been the Greatest Baby in the Whole World!!! She also told me that she needed a map to show her how to grow-up to be a lady. She sure keeps us giggling.

We also did our Tapestry of Grace reading, practiced our Westminster Shorter Catechism questions, and learned about 3rd declension nouns in Greek. And my older son learned to graph equations in Life of Fred: Algebra.

Not a bad week!

Jamie is hosting this week’s Wrap-Up at See Jamie Blog. You can read more wrap-ups there.