Our Blue Square Schoolhouse: Fall Term: Week Three Notes

This week we had three days of our full schedule for fall term (that is what I'm calling this first seven-week term). On Thursday we went to the Children's Museum.

MA and I had four 20-25-minute morning times together this week. We did:
--Math--Lauri shapes stacking sorter--M stacked them by color and then by shape.

--Math--Super Sorting Pie--I was a bit distracted this morning, but I think she sorted them by type.

--Read aloud--I read The Mitten by Jan Brett. We had a paper mitten pocket with animals that she had made last year at homeschool co-op, so she used that to act out the story with me.

--ABCs--I buried the capital letters from the Lauri letter puzzle in her rice bin. She had fun finding them, naming them (with my help), and putting them in the puzzle. This was a favorite activity, and she continued to do it even after our time together. She took out the lower case letters too and buried those along with the capital letters.

Something else we also tried this week was to read through some nursery rhymes in hopes that we could start having her memorize them one at a time. I printed out a cute printable of nursery rhymes for that.

Block Three (RJ's and AG's times with me and their piano practice and handwriting time) went pretty well for the first week. I think we are getting the kinks worked out.

This week was a lot of review. I reviewed both of their mastered All About Spelling cards and moved the ones that needed more practice back to the review section. A is at the end of Level 1, and RJ is halfway through Level 2.

I decided to skip the rest of Level 2 of First Language Lessons with RJ. The main thing I wanted her to get out of it was the memorization of the rest of the definitions of the parts of speech, so we are playing games to memorize and review them before moving onto Easy Grammar 3 and 4.

Both RJ and AG were very into their copywork this week, which surprised me greatly. AG copied the whole poem called "The Eagle" by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the first week and even wants to memorize it. RJ coped the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution and Mark 10:14.

We did not get through all of our Sonlight read alouds this week. The part of me that likes to get all the boxes checked cringes a little at the thought of continuing them next week, but I know it is good not to rush through them just to get it done.

One reason we didn't get them done was that RJ had a horse riding lesson on Wednesday afternoon. She loved her second lesson almost as much as the first. The instructors said she had not forgotten anything and even worked some things out that had been confusing to her before. I'm so glad it went well.

Tuesday I gave in to RJ's requests to take out watercolors in the afternoon. They had fun creating many paintings. Watercolors are by far my favorite paints. They are the only ones I consistently allow upstairs instead of in the art area in the basement.

I even painted--you can see my flower on a card I made for a friend

Two of AG's paintings

RJ's last painting

MA's painting of a cave, according to her

Thursday morning I woke up later and ended up letting everyone sleep in later too. I decided to take them to the Children's museum. We went to the museum store first, which was a fantastic idea. Usually we go when I'm exhausted and grumpy, and it's packed. At 10:30 am it was empty, and I had plenty of energy. We spent time in the China exhibit, then had lunch, played in the Playscape area, the carousel area, and Science works before heading home. I was pretty spent after all that, but I think everyone had a good time.

On Friday we did not work on American Heritage Girl badge requirements because a friend came over to show the girls how to make paper. She spent three hours with them and was so sweet, patient, and encouraging to them. Even MA tried making paper and did pretty well. I spent the time pulling CN and her daughter in the wagon and figuring out other ways to keep the young ones occupied.