It's coming to the end of the week, right? I'm excited to have a little change of routine with the weekend. We said goodbye to DH's sister and her little girl today. Niece was not happy to see all her playmates go away, but she will love being with Grandma. I am going to have to start enforcing time limits with Chicklette. She takes forever on her assignments and it slows down our whole day. Racer could get most of his work done in a few hours, but with waiting for Chicklette, it turns into a much longer day. Chicklette is just going to end up with homework and Racer isn't.
We said goodbye to DH's sister and toddler and then went to co-op. The kids all had a great time there today. Turtle's class had a fun music time and learning about rhyming words. Chicklette learned about Massachusetts and got to have a Boston Creme Pie donut. Racer discussed the difference between weight and mass and performed an experiment to demonstrate their learning. Then they also learned about Massachusetts and Johnny Appleseed. Although I am an introvert and co-op wipes me out for the day, I am so thankful that we have wonderful friends and teachers we can share our Thursdays with.
Math - I gave both kids a choice between doing their Latin or their math in the car on the way to co-op. They both chose math. Racer did fine as usual. I don't think he missed any. I thought Chicklette's math was a practice or a review. Unfortunately, it was a new concept that I hadn't taught her yet. I know. Bad teacher/mommy moment. When we got home, it was pretty quick to teach her how to solve those problems. Like I said, she understands how to do things, she just gets distracted by anything passing by. Sometimes she's just daydreaming. I stood by her today saying, "What's the problem? What's your first step? Now what? Now what's the answer?" After I did that for half of her problems, I told her to finish up going that same speed. Someday she will see the value in actually finishing her work.
Science - Racer is almost finished with his Isaac Newton biography. He can read Harry Potter 5 in less than a week, but it takes him a whole week to finish a 115 page book? Yeah, he's my son. Chicklette was working on her math or Latin still so we didn't get to fill in anything on her scientist questionnaire.
Latin - Today's review was focused on the practical Latin sayings that we've been learning like Salve, magistra and Valete.
Religion - I finally called a time-out on Chicklette's math so that we could do some of the subjects that we usually do together. In religion, we watched the video for Getting Ready for the Church. All Chicklette could narrate to me was about the covenants we make during the sacrament. I wouldn't be surprised if that's all that Racer wrote too.
Writing with Ease - Racer's Writing with Ease was a dictation exercise today. He didn't do as well as I would have liked. Even after I repeated the sentences six or eight times and he scribbled some secret notes to himself, he still couldn't get it exactly right. At least he did do it in cursive. As I said on Tuesday, I could have done two exercises with Chicklette today, but by this time I was done with school and the babies needed me so we just did one exercise - a copywork exercise. Before I could point out what she was supposed to focus on, she was jabbing at the page, "This is a capital and this is a capital and this one is." I guess she's noticing something. So tomorrow we will do a Writing with Ease and she will be caught up in that subject.
I'm debating taking some time off of Singapore math with Chicklette. Maybe just a week. I think I need to practice some of the skills that they've introduced a little more. I could pull out some of the games from the Teacher's Manual. I just need to shift Turtle's reading lesson a little bit or maybe he could finish in the time it takes Chicklette to do her Xtramath. We didn't get to what I scheduled for history today which actually will not mess up our schedule. This is one week where I didn't have a Road Trip USA scheduled on a Friday. That's a relief.
Saturday I'm planning on making pots and pots of spaghetti sauce. The test case we did last week turned out well so hopefully I'll be able to get a bunch done on Saturday. It's almost time to shut down the garden for the year. We got snow on the mountains yesterday and we dug up all the potatoes that we planted this year. We didn't get half as many as I would have liked, but our neighbor has ordered some in bulk and we jumped in on that order so we can freeze a bunch of them.
We said goodbye to DH's sister and toddler and then went to co-op. The kids all had a great time there today. Turtle's class had a fun music time and learning about rhyming words. Chicklette learned about Massachusetts and got to have a Boston Creme Pie donut. Racer discussed the difference between weight and mass and performed an experiment to demonstrate their learning. Then they also learned about Massachusetts and Johnny Appleseed. Although I am an introvert and co-op wipes me out for the day, I am so thankful that we have wonderful friends and teachers we can share our Thursdays with.
Math - I gave both kids a choice between doing their Latin or their math in the car on the way to co-op. They both chose math. Racer did fine as usual. I don't think he missed any. I thought Chicklette's math was a practice or a review. Unfortunately, it was a new concept that I hadn't taught her yet. I know. Bad teacher/mommy moment. When we got home, it was pretty quick to teach her how to solve those problems. Like I said, she understands how to do things, she just gets distracted by anything passing by. Sometimes she's just daydreaming. I stood by her today saying, "What's the problem? What's your first step? Now what? Now what's the answer?" After I did that for half of her problems, I told her to finish up going that same speed. Someday she will see the value in actually finishing her work.
Science - Racer is almost finished with his Isaac Newton biography. He can read Harry Potter 5 in less than a week, but it takes him a whole week to finish a 115 page book? Yeah, he's my son. Chicklette was working on her math or Latin still so we didn't get to fill in anything on her scientist questionnaire.
Latin - Today's review was focused on the practical Latin sayings that we've been learning like Salve, magistra and Valete.
Religion - I finally called a time-out on Chicklette's math so that we could do some of the subjects that we usually do together. In religion, we watched the video for Getting Ready for the Church. All Chicklette could narrate to me was about the covenants we make during the sacrament. I wouldn't be surprised if that's all that Racer wrote too.
Writing with Ease - Racer's Writing with Ease was a dictation exercise today. He didn't do as well as I would have liked. Even after I repeated the sentences six or eight times and he scribbled some secret notes to himself, he still couldn't get it exactly right. At least he did do it in cursive. As I said on Tuesday, I could have done two exercises with Chicklette today, but by this time I was done with school and the babies needed me so we just did one exercise - a copywork exercise. Before I could point out what she was supposed to focus on, she was jabbing at the page, "This is a capital and this is a capital and this one is." I guess she's noticing something. So tomorrow we will do a Writing with Ease and she will be caught up in that subject.
I'm debating taking some time off of Singapore math with Chicklette. Maybe just a week. I think I need to practice some of the skills that they've introduced a little more. I could pull out some of the games from the Teacher's Manual. I just need to shift Turtle's reading lesson a little bit or maybe he could finish in the time it takes Chicklette to do her Xtramath. We didn't get to what I scheduled for history today which actually will not mess up our schedule. This is one week where I didn't have a Road Trip USA scheduled on a Friday. That's a relief.
Saturday I'm planning on making pots and pots of spaghetti sauce. The test case we did last week turned out well so hopefully I'll be able to get a bunch done on Saturday. It's almost time to shut down the garden for the year. We got snow on the mountains yesterday and we dug up all the potatoes that we planted this year. We didn't get half as many as I would have liked, but our neighbor has ordered some in bulk and we jumped in on that order so we can freeze a bunch of them.