Weekly Report 9

It’s been a pretty slow week.  We started out ok, but D has been sick and sleeping since Wednesday night.  He’s hardly eaten a thing and what we have gotten down him (mainly water) has come right back up.  He slept through yesterday for the most part and today has rotated through my lap, DH’s lap, the couch, and the floor.  He’s not really happy right now, but he’s quiet and back sleeping.  Needless to say, we read a bit with A and C, had A do some math and called it a day.  I’m trying to get through the mountain of laundry and bedding that keeps getting added upon.  I’m so glad I have absolutely nothing on the calendar for this weekend and that DH ordered a pizza for dinner.

When D was happy earlier in the week, he did massive amounts of cutting, mainly with A.  That seems to be their activity together.  A loves being the little teacher.  D was excited to work through the book until he could do the “hoc-pus” (octopus).

C has done, well, not very much–several number pages and one page of tracing letters.  He’s good at listening in on all our discussions (even when I think he’s not) and later repeats relevant facts or asks pertinent questions about India, or whether Bach and Handel knew each other, so I know he soaks up information like a sponge.  The input greatly exceeds the output at this stage.

As for A:

Math: Singapore 1B #57-62, 64, he should finish this book by the end of the month. 

Language: FLL #25 and Spelling Workout lesson 16

Reading: A is halfway through Magic or Not by Edward Eager which he started yesterday.  He’s also read quite a bit of the Friend and Highlights magazines.  He grabs them as soon as I bring the mail in and sits down to read.

Together:

Science: We’ve essentially finished our bodies.  We talked about the five senses and read Eyes and Ears by Seymour Simon.  We watched a video and they drew faces for their body outlines.  A didn’t want to add hair and his looks distinctly Egyptian to me!  C wanted help with the nose and adding teeth.  A also did a 5 senses booklet and drew something he likes for each different sense.

History: We read SOTW chapter 9 and part of chapter 30 on Ancient India.  A colored one picture and did the mapwork from chapters 9 and 11 (which isn’t terribly challenging–it’s color this, underline that, trace the river in blue, but he’s getting highly familiar with African and Asian geography so I can’t complain.)  We also read some good books about India, but no projects.

Art: We opted not to do our Artistic Pursuits lesson today.  It’s nice to feel that we can voluntarily go easy and not do certain things as opposed to trying to do too much, getting behind, and feeling like we never get to certain subjects, like art.  We did read a great book called Look, Look, Look about some mice who look for different elements of art in a postcard.  It was a great go-along for our art collage project last week, and was good for getting us to look at the picture in different ways.

Music: A and C went to Kindermusik.  We’re studying Handel so we can hear the Messiah at the end of the month.  A listened to the Classical Kids cd Hallelujah Handel and read Handel, Who Knew What He Liked. 

I taught four cello students on Wednesday and am trying to keep my weeks straight.  Is it Kindermusik-no symphony rehearsal, or symphony but no Kindermusik, or could it be neither, or is it the rare week this month with both?  So far, so good, I’ve shown up where I’ve needed to be.

On Monday we went to the natural history museum for free and they always enjoy digging for dinosaur bones and playing with the games and puzzles in the discovery center, where you can also watch the university’s paleontology lab in action.  Then we looked at dinosaur bones upstairs and explored the new exhibit about the Bear River and had the most fun with the model of the Great Salt Lake and all the tributaries that flow into it.  Anything with water is always a hit around here.