Tag Archives: book recommendations

Wrapping Up Week 9 (2015-16)

Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Whew!  What a crazy five days we had last week!  I really needed the weekend to recover.  Several of the kids’ activities started up, and it may take us a while to feel settled with the schedule for this fall:

  • Writing class
  • Music classes (choir, handchimes, composer study, and more)
  • Wrestling twice a week for the older boys
  • Ballet/tap for Arianna
  • Trail Life USA for the older boys
  • the last few weeks of swimming lessons

Add to that a beach day (turned park day) with homeschool friends, and it’s amazing we got anything done at all over the course of the week!  For the last few years I’ve been very deliberate about keeping our schedule light, but we’re testing the waters this fall to see how we do with so much going on.

This week in our Preschool

It seems like many schools have gotten so focused on academics these days, that they’re neglecting classic early childhood activities.  No such problems here!  Arianna and Elijah spent HOURS this past week playing with blocks.  I was amazed at some of the structures Elijah built.  (You’d think I’d have a nice picture here to show off my future engineer’s genius, wouldn’t you?  There goes that Mom of the week award.)

Science

In Our Weather & Water (our first term’s book in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth) we read about tsunamis.  I remember as a kid having a mental picture of tsunamis that must have come from Hollywood, so I wanted my children to have a more realistic idea of what a tsunami looked like and how much damage it could cause even if it didn’t look like the movies.  We watched a couple YouTube videos of actual tsunamis, which really made an impression.  (Then we watched one of those crazy fictional accounts, talking about how different it was.)

Crazily enough, we had a beach day planned with our homeschool friends on Thursday, and we had to cancel it because of a tsunami advisory for our part of the California coast following a major earthquake in Chile.  It really brought our lesson home!  I think the disappointment my kids would normally have felt was actually lessened by the cool factor of the possibility of an actual tsunami.  Thankfully there was little to report after the day had come and gone, but it helped make science an exciting subject for the week.

A few final thoughts

I’m so thankful for the weeks we spent earlier in the summer trying to establish routines for the boys to work through their lessons independently.  That was the only reason they were able to get through 99% of their scheduled work for the week.

Elijah beltI’m also really thankful for the chance to get the boys involved in wrestling.  It’s a great sport for our family because their smaller size doesn’t put them at an automatic disadvantage, and it gives them a positive outlet for all that “boy energy” that threatens to drive this mama crazy at times.  They absolutely love it, and it was wonderful to see the gleam in their eyes as they set about trying to get the best of their opponents.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

Wrapping Up Week 8 (2015-16)

Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 ballet prayer-001We are officially back to school.  (Week 7 was more of a trial run, but I counted it because we did quite a bit of schoolwork over our summer break to make up for lighter days I knew would be ahead.)  The boys resumed the majority of their subjects this past week (with the exception of spelling and handwriting because I just wasn’t that on top of things). Arianna’s worship ballet class started up again.  And now that our long lost printer has been found and set up (Hallelujah!), I feel like we’re finally moved in and life is back to normal.

Read Alouds

I debated about going back to Michael Polpurgo’s retelling of Beowulf after these past several weeks off, but Ian didn’t resist at all when I picked it up again, and we finished it in less days than I had planned because he was into it.

I love being able to tie in quality literature with our history studies, especially since Ian is doing all his history lessons online through the Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course (Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation) so I’m not as involved as I was last year.  I try to sit in on it most days, but I’m not always able to be there for the whole lesson.  I’ve already learned so much, as has Elijah, just from being in the room when Ian’s lessons are displayed on the television as we works!  Sharing stories helps me enjoy his history studies even more.

Veritas Press has several literature selections that go along with the lessons, but there are many weeks with nothing assigned or others with books we’ve already read recently, so I’ve put together a list of additional books I’d like to read together on those weeks.  Just planning out the rest of our history reading for the year this week got me so excited for the months ahead and the wonderful stories we’ll get to explore together.

In addition to our historical literature, I want to continue reading plenty of chapter books with Ian just for fun.  By taking turns picking books, I have a chance to share some of the classic literature I know he wouldn’t pick up on his own as well as some of my childhood favorites while still letting him experience the joy of making his own choices.  This week we finished Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe, and we were so excited to move on to the next book in the series (Howliday Inn) that I forgot it was my turn to choose.

Bunnicula  Howliday Inn
Ian wants to keep going through the series, but I told him he’ll have to wait through my selections.  I keep telling him he could just read them himself, but he prefers listening, so it may take us a while to make it through the rest of the books if his interest holds.  Even if he’s not yet compelled to pick up books to read by himself, I’m glad he enjoys them so much.  He’s already determined to help Nathaniel enjoy family read alouds.

DSCN0095x

Independent Learning

Language Skills

All three kids spent time on Reading Eggs this week.  I need to have Arianna repeat lessons more often, because while she does okay online, what she’s learning just doesn’t seem to transfer to reading from real books.  We sat down this week to spend time reading together and it proved to be a frustrating experience for us both.  I’m not sure whether the problem is that she’s really not understanding or just that she lacks confidence.  She still so young I don’t want to push her at all, but it seems odd that she can do things in Reading Eggs but not offline.

Both boys are also working through units in Elementary (K-2) Spanish from Middlebury Interactive Languages.  Last year Ian completed the first semester while Elijah watched and occasionally did a few lessons.  This time I’m having Elijah work through the first semester on his own while Ian has moved on to the second.  I really wish I could give them more opportunities to converse in Spanish, but I barely know more than they do (and I’m sure they’ll surpass me soon), and so far I haven’t found a way to make that happen.

Math

Elijah is almost through the 1st grade lessons on CTCMath.com.  I’m not sure what I’m going to have him do after that.  I guess he can just move onto 2nd grade, but at some point I think I’m going to want to have him settle a bit more.  Maybe I’ll try to supplement with another program so he doesn’t go too quickly through the lessons.

Ian has been plowing away at Teaching Textbooks Math 3, completing 5 lessons (plus any quizzes) each week, but since there are only 118 lessons altogether, I’m going lighten up his weekly load a bit as we start up our music classes on Friday as well as a writing class on Tuesdays.  As I was planning for the rest of the year I jotted down some notes to keep us on pace to make sure he does at least get through all the lessons this year, but I think we’ll have lots of wiggle room.  I doubt he’ll have any interest in trying to move up to the next grade level a little early.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

Easing Back into School (Wrapping Up Week 7)

Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
cutest newborn everWe’re settling into life with our little one and trying to find our new “normal” now that Nathaniel is part of family life. (Is he not one of the cutest newborns ever???  I’m so in love!) This week I started preparing the older boys for getting back to our school schedule.  We touched a little on history and math (we’d squeezed in our full week’s worth of science the day before Nathaniel surprised us with his early arrival), but mostly we spent hours every day reading aloud.

In the chaos of the first couple weeks after the baby was born, the kids had used up at least a month’s worth of screen time.  I was so tired of having the television on that this week I just announced that there would be no more watching shows until after everyone’s afternoon naps.

Baby-IslandAs the kids sat down for lunch on Monday, I grabbed an old childhood favorite, Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink.  (I figured if there was ever a time when my boys might be willing to sit through a story about two girls and a bunch of babies, this was it.  They loved it!)  We read through the entire book before bedtime that day because every time I went to put it down Ian would beg for more.

I decided to take turns choosing chapter books to read together, and over the course of the week we finished two more and started into another.  Ian’s first selection was The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey (Cooper Kids Adventure Series #6) by Frank E. Peretti.  When we’d gotten through that one I picked The Witches by Roald Dahl, and we finished out the week reading the first couple chapters in Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe, which we already read a couple years ago but Ian wanted to read again.  (Can you tell he loves anything with a hint of spookiness? Not my favorite genre, but all of these met with my approval and made him feel like he was getting a special treat since I usually don’t allow the ones he picks at the public library.  These were all from our family’s collection.)

Toco Rey   witches   Bunnicula

I love seeing Ian getting excited about books.  Right now I have lots of time to sit and read to him while I nurse the baby, but sometimes I have to turn down his requests, and I hope he’ll feel motivated to read more on his own when I’m not available.  And if all he got out of school this week was a deeper enjoyment of books, I’ll call it a successful week.