Week 7

This week was pretty standard, except that I did have an ER run with Adelaide that kept us both out until 3:30 in the morning.  Since Tyler is on his surgery rotation, I thought it would be better if he got sleep.  Unfortunately, this made me incredibly tired all day, so at least one day was pretty useless.  But we still managed to get some school done, even if the house did get trashed!  And Adelaide is doing much better now, so we just keep trucking along.

Math:
We did pages 121-136 in Essentials A.  This week we continued to cover size comparisons and started weights.  I'm excited that Lydia is almost done with A, as my goal was to finish it this year, not two months after we started it!  I've been amazed with how well she is learning new concepts, and she's definitely exceeding my expectations.  I'm thinking we'll just start Essentials B when she finishes A.  I'm sure this will slow her down a bit, because it is supposed to be at a higher difficulty level.

Miquon is still going well.  We went back and did some of the lab sheets we already completed, mostly because I think she still has a little bit to go before I feel comfortable using the rods to teach her concepts.  She is really enjoying it so far, and I'm finding that I am not having as difficult a time teaching it as I thought I would.  So far I've had to tweak most of our school work to Lydia's unique way of learning, so Miquon works because it is built to be a tool, not necessarily a set of step-by-step lessons.  So I guess you could say that I'm still feeling the Miquon love.

Reading:
We're still working on reading through all the OPGTR sentences up to Lesson 40 via my homemade readers.  Lydia's attention span for reading is pretty low, so we're only getting a few minutes done a day, but she continues to do well.

Memorization/Calendar:
Calendar is the same as usual and we started a new poem.  Lydia is now working on "The Falling Star."  It is longer than Lydia's last poem, so it may take us a bit longer.  We are also reviewing all her other memory work almost daily.

Harvest Time:
I decided to make this its own section in my Weekly Report.  I'm a little off on this one because our week for this curriculum is Thursdays-Wednesdays.  Because of the activities we do outside our house, this schedule makes the most sense for us time-wise.

This last week we talked about where milk comes from and read a book about Heifer International giving a goat to a little girl's family. We also read a different book about the process of getting milk from the cow to our home.  Then, as our activity, we made bread and butter.  I tried to let the girls help with the bread and they enjoyed watching the bread kneed.  As anyone who knows our family can attest, I am definitely not the baker in the family, so I wasn't sure how our bread would turn out, but it was pretty good!

Then the curriculum guide suggests you let the children do a "butter battle."  Basically you put cream in a container for the child to shake while you let the mixer make butter, and see who wins.  Well, I knew the "battle" part wouldn't work, but I thought I'd let the girls try to make butter in a jar.  Very quickly I moved them outside to the grass because their jars kept dropping on the ceramic tile (although luckily didn't break).  Both girls lost interest after about 30 seconds, so that was a flop too.  We came inside and I poured their cream in the Kitchen Aid and they watched it turn into butter.  Success!

They also enjoyed eating the bread and butter that they helped make.  Lydia kept saying, "Mmm, this is good bread!"

Miscellaneous:
Lydia did pages 6-12 in Color, Count, and Cut.  We talked about our Renoir prints, and although Lydia can now successfully name all the ones that have English names, she's having difficulty remembering the French ones.  Makes sense.  We also continue to listen to Debussy on a regular basis, although lately Lydia has wanted to listen to Adele instead. :)