Week in Review: October 8-12

Back to normal this week after having a lighter week definitely takes some adjustments for us all!

I really need to give a shout-out to my sweet husband this week. I teach English to a wonderful group of homeschool junior highers. It is so wonderful to be a stay-at-home mom and still have an opportunity to use the skill I learned in college. I love how good God is to orchestrate all of the moments of my life to coordinate together in such a beautiful way!

Rose attends the learning center where I teach, but Grace and Beth are still too young to attend. So my preacher-husband takes his day off so I can teach and offered to teach the younger girls their lessons to help me out. Wow! I have to be honest and tell you I wasn't certain how it would go, but he does so well and even does the fun stuff with the girls. The Heart of Dakota curriculum is in part a huge reason this succeeds. He is completely comfortable opening the guides and teaching the girls. At the same time I really appreciate his willingness to do something totally out of his comfort zone to help our homeschooling experience be a success. This Daddy really loves his girls and is a bigger support for me than I ever imagined!

Little Hands: Unit 6
Thankfully Grace's "phase" seems to have lessened some so school with her went quite well. She really did well both during her school time and when it was time for her to play alone. I just love hearing her play pretend with her Little People. I sometimes sneak behind her so I can just watch and listen.

Now on to school :)

Unit 6 was a lot of fun. She particularly liked the song for this unit from The Singing Bible. It was a really fun song and she danced around the room every time we played it. I wanted to get a picture, but they all came out blurry because she was moving so fast! I finally did get one picture of her back, but you can even see in this how much fun she was having. You have to love those bouncing baby curls!

Another highlight of the week was studying Joseph. She loved playing "Joseph-May-I" when we studied Joseph being in charge of Egypt. Another fun activity was when she had to choose 10 stuffed animals (she opted for cars and a Lego bug) to be Joseph's brothers. I love our curriculum more and more each week! Here are the brothers coming to ask her (as Joseph) for food and she very politely told them they could have some.

She brought them a toy bananna and two scoops of ice cream, then made sure they all got to eat some. Grace did insist on calling him Josephy, but it was so cute I decided not to correct her. She just makes me smile!




Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 9
Beth is just charging ahead and doing so beautifully! She never struggles in any of her subjects and I usually only have to explain a concept once. We started learning to tell time this week. She quickly picked up on learning the o'clocks. Half past took a little longer to master, but by then end of our lesson she had mastered the concept. The only issue she had was remembering to look at the number behind the little hand. This confused my oldest daughter too so I suppose this is normal.

She continues to do really well at her handwriting and waivers between coloring the picture to match the one exactly in the handwriting book and making it rainbow colored. I find it very interesting that her handwriting on manuscript paper is very neat, but when she is just writing for fun it looks very different. I'm sure it's a maturity thing, but since this is my first time around teaching kindergarten I am finding all of the nuances to be quite intriguing.




This was the first week Beth wrote down spelling words as I dictated them. She was hesitant at first, so I had her spell it aloud while I wrote it down and then she copied it. We did a few this way, then she asked to try it on her own and away she flew! It is such a joy to see her moving forward with such great strides. This weekend she came to me with a note she wrote to her grandma. It said, "I love you because you love me." Because was spelled correctly!!!! I was shocked! Now, it did traverse across two lines, but all the letters were there in the correct order. Way to go Beth!


Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 8
Rose is quietly moving ahead with her work and becoming increasingly independent. This is very exciting for me because next year she will move into Preparing Hearts for His Glory which will require more independence for her. She does get a little frustrated that her school day is longer than her sisters' sometimes, but this week did a great job staying focused.

We discovered a new technique to make math go quicker. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, but Rose requested I try it and we found out it worked! Over the last few weeks her written math has begun extending to a longer and longer period even though she isn't learning any new concepts. This has frustrated both of us since it is extending the day much longer. On Tuesday she asked me to set a timer because she felt she could focus better. I agreed and gave her 15 minutes. I told her it was more important for her to get the right answer than beat the time. She finished in 8 minutes what has been taking he 45. Not only that, every answer perfect where she had been making numerous careless errors. For Rose having a time limit really helps her focus. She asked me to continue this and for now we will. I'm just glad we found a solution!

Rose continues to enjoy history and science, although I'm not doing as much of the science as I had before. One of the classes she takes at the learning center is science so in order not to make our days too long we only do science if we have extra time. She hasn't seemed to miss it and this will leave some fun experiments and activities to do during the summer. History continues to fascinate her and we often look up locations and people online together to get more information.

So this week was good...really, really good. No one is sick, for the most part everyone was obedient, and they all enjoyed school. I suppose I should bookmark this week for the future when we have a less than stellar week and I'm feeling discouraged!