Weekly Wrap-Up: Highlights, Counting Macaroni and Puppet Show Reality

Where did the week go???

Seriously between teething, colds and grocery shopping, I'm not sure how it's already time to share our week.

We did have one non-"traditional" school day. On Wednesday, after Anna spent an hour on "independent" work, Brian took both girls with him on a church trip to see a local ministry. They were excited about going and had a blast with church members! I took the boys to the library, quick stop at a friend's and the grocery store... the adventurous life of a SAHM:) LOL!!

Everyone gathered back at home and we decided to forgo school for the afternoon and push naps until later in the afternoon so we could enjoy the amazingly warm and beautiful weather;) Nice walk to the post office and 20 dirty little toes to wash:)

Here's a look at our week by subject!!

Bible
We're continuing to work on Psalm 19:) It's soo exciting to see the verses that the kids remember and I"m soo amazed that we're almost done the whole chapter!! I LOVE that my kids enjoy memorizing Scripture and it's amazing how easy it when it's reviewed over and over.

In fact they surprised me at lunch today by reciting the kiddie meal prayer,"God is great, God is good..." They said the WHOLE thing!! I think between Awana snacktime and meals with the Woods, they've picked it up;) They are such sponges at this age!!

We're also working hard on our Awana material, Anna is working on learning the books of the OT!! We've been listening to Wee Sing Bible Songs since they were tiny, so it's cute to hear her trying to sing the song.

Reading
Anna read a Magic Tree House and Frecklejuice:) I also introduced her to recording the books she is reading onto a Reading Log that I got from Jolanthe @ Homeschool Creations!! I like that she has to find important info about each book like the author, publisher, etc!! And that it has a beginning date and an ending date;) Now if we can keep track of the new words;)

ANna and I also completed lessons in grammer and spelling. I am motivated to make a grammer definition game/poster to help us memorize all the great grammer definitions:) If it's good maybe I can figure out how to share it;)

Chris worked through a lesson or two from OPG... he's doing well, but we're taking it SLOW to keep it fun!!I'm soo thankful for what he is learning and retaining... teaching kids to read was one of my greatest fears in homeschooling because it's soo important and affects all the other subjects!!

Lydia practiced more of her word families from the first few reading lessons of OPG. But we're really still needing to practice before we press on... so that's what we worked on... the "-ad, -an, -am, -et and -ed" families!! We'll be here for a while, better to stay and have a solid foundation:)

One fun way for Lydia to practice these families (without Mommy or her sister) is with the Leap Frog Word Whammer.



We have a subscription to Highlights magazine.... Lydia LOVES these!! So this week we started reading the February edition. I have to admit that many months the kids look through this magazine themselves. But since Friday was a little more "laid back" we read the stories together and tried out the game which corresponded to one of the stories:)

And I just found the link to Audio Editions of the magazine:)So you can listen to the stories... or now my Lydia can "read" her magazine and I can figure out to pronounce the Spanish phrases right;)

Math
We completed 4 or 5 lessons from Saxon this week:) Both kids having assessments and doing very well;)

One of Anna's lesson activities was to count a box of macaroni. Boy, oh, boy.... LOL!! Anyway, we guessed how many and then the next day we counted... grouping by 10's... thank goodness! Lydia was brave enough to help for a bit, at first counting out tens like Anna.


But soon we found a different way for Lydia to sort out 100 that was easier for her:)



















The girls counted out like 600 and then Anna and I finished counting almost a thousand more after lunch... yes, there were 1,559 of those things in that box!!

Chris is doing soo well in math with Saxon. I really debated this year starting him on Saxon because it's not very bright and attention attracting and b/c it's the 1st grade curriculum! But Chris really likes it and ASKs to do math and his worksheet. I think it's all the manipulatives with each lesson, it goes slow so he's not been stressed out and it's one-on-one time with Mommy:)

This week he "learned" some math facts, funny thing was that he already knew them...

Anna had taught him and Lydia their doubles facts while they pretended playing school... ha ha haa, I should just let ANna teach them:)

Science
We are starting our Astronomy unit that should bring us into the summer:) Whoa!! I've been a little hesitant to start because there are soo many different things to cover and I"m trying to work through it in a logical manner...

So this week we started with what we know about our Earth as a planet... really a review from a week of learning about Earth in the fall. We read some library books and flipping through our projects from the fall, but we didn't do anything amazing or creative this week.... which a motivator to this momma to find some really great stuff for us in the next few weeks:)

History
This week we studied Charles Martel and Charlemagne:) The kids loved the fighting and adventure aspect of the stories! They also really enjoy the coloring pages and they colored the puppets in the hopes of putting on a puppet show for us using some of the key figures in Charlemagne's life:) And I finally broke down and ordered a book to help with some of these middle ages fellows that aren't normally covered in children's books... so we got to read about Charles the Hammer and Pepin and Charlemagne in that book as well;)

We DID do the puppet show... hmm, very basic!

I have to admit that I was a little annoyed that the kids didn't put forth much effort.... BUT they are 6, 5, and 4 studying France in the 700 and 800's!! And we really didn't have a lot of EXCITING material to actually have the puppets act out....

so maybe when we cover this again in 4 years, our puppet show might ROCK!! Until then, I was really pleased that they know all the names of the characters AND how they relate to Charlemagne....

I have to admit that I didn't know these names before this week, besides Charlemagne!!

I'm linking up to Weekly Wrap-up:)