Fall term: Week 7 notes

This week was better than last week.  We spent some of the week celebrating MA's 4th birthday, which added a little festiveness to the week.  We got three decent days of school work in and ended the week with a spontaneous trip to the orchard to join our friends in apple picking.

We missed out on our homeschool co-op this week because MA got sick Monday evening, and I would rather err on the cautious side when it comes to stomach bugs.  It ended up being a one-time-thing (Praise the Lord!), so we just treated Tuesday like a normal day at home.

AG doing her math in the rocking chair with a cozy quilt

MA had a couple of times with me this week.  We did a math activity called Domino Parking Lot. She liked that a lot, as have all my girls, and it gave her the opportunity to work on counting and sorting by number.  Later in the week we played the ABC fishing game again (her request).  She has been consistent in knowing the same eight letters that she knew from last time.  We've also been reading aloud a lot, and she has spent time with her sisters putting together her new Lego friends set.

Building Lego friends

RJ and AG finally did narrations for me from their reading books.  AG orally narrated after reading the first four chapters of The Littles.  RJ re-read Marco Polo and wrote a long narration on that.  Maybe I'll add a post later with her narration.

AG finished Step 3 in All About Spelling Level 2.  She continues to do very well with spelling.  I probably could skip ahead, but she seems to enjoy it, so we'll just keep going through it at a good pace.

I've been a little frustrated at RJ's slow memorization of her remaining parts of speech definitions.  For all she's memorized, you'd think this would be easy.  I think we'll start Easy Grammar 3 and 4 next term even though she is still finishing up memorizing.  I might evaluate her to see which ones she knows, and then just review the ones she is still learning before each Easy Grammar lesson.

During Morning time we finished Lesson 3 in Prima Latina by each of the girls doing a written quiz alone with me so I could spell words for them.  We also finished memorizing Passage 1 from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 257-266).  I found out this week that MA has been listening while we practice the passage, and that she knows most of it!

On Wednesday I tried something different with the read alouds.  I read one during lunch, but then I saved the rest for rest time.  I figured that since I'm not getting much actual rest during rest time, I may as well read aloud.  Reading out loud to my kids is something I enjoy anyway, and I'm hoping this will be a somewhat restful time of being cozy in the living room and enjoying some books together.  We might even have tea or hot chocolate some days.  I'm still hoping to find some time to sneak away for a half an hour and recharge for a bit during the afternoon, but for the next term, we'll try this new thing.

This week will be our fall break.  I don't know how break-ish it will be, but I know that I will enjoy a break from the normal routine, and some time to get some other things done, like those costumes I'm sewing for RJ and AG.