Weekly Wrap Up: Schooling with Flexibility and Park Days

Bible
We learned the final verse of Psalms 19 this week.... yay:) So now we're practicing and reviewing... I would soo love for the kids to say it on video sometime. But more importantly they are hiding God's Word in their hearts and we completed a whole chapter... perseverance;)

Anna is reviewing the books of the Old Testament for Awana. It's been a little of a family thing since everyone hears her/us practicing. I was surprised the other day while singing the little memory song how much Chris knows.... LOL!!... he;s just there picking it up as well:) And for those interested I love the Wee Sing Bible Song version... I learned them as a kid that way and still know it;) And my kids love it too;)

Reading
We've been reading and reading some more... more as a group and me reading aloud, though. We finally got to the library on Friday, so the kids could pick out some non-history/science books. Maybe they'll read (and flip through) a little more independently with books of their choice;)

Chris worked on OPG 3 or 4 days this week.

Lydia really has lost interest in OPG... so I'm working on sight words, rhyming families and Bob books with her right now. I feel like it's a "set back" but there is really no reason to PUSH when she isn't ready. And she is loving sight words and BOB books, so I feel like I'm not totally giving up on teaching her reading.

She's always on the look-out for someone to help her read a Bob book.... this moment of her and Chris (I posted a similar one yesterday!) on the couch together, was too precious!

For Anna's free reading she's been working through the Cul-de-Sac kids series. They are written by Christian author Beverly Lewis. She seems interested in them since those are usually the first thing she grabs during her own "free reading" time.

Math
And it's begun:) Anna officially started multiplication... oh, boy:) She's been soo excited and I got a little nervous about first starting to teach her the concepts of groups of 10, etc!! As we gathered the supplies she started spouting off the multiplication facts she already knew....

hmmm?? ALL the ones I was supposed to be teaching her??? She confessed (LOL!!) to studying the multiplication chart that we have in the school room waiting for her to start multiplication... she 's been trying to find patterns within each number family;) So she told me why 10's were soo easy.... oh, well for teaching her:)

Lydia is hanging in there during math... matching and doing puzzles!! She's been practicing counting to 20. And learning the number families with us... we're working on 4 and reviewing 2 & 3!

Chris is chugging away at Saxon Math:) He loves it and would MUCH, MUCH rather do two math lessons than any reading:) I do try to make completing his worksheet fun when he starts to get bored... his favorite this week was using his fingerprints instead of coloring in the boxes;)
(and yes, I did turn the table so next week all the letters should be facing the right direction!!)

Science
We read more Sun books .... like Sun by Steve Tomecek (cute and informative)...

and then started learning about Mercury. We've enjoyed a series of planet/solar system books by Seymour Simon. I liked the real pictures and information versus the drawings of the planets. Really hoping our library carries more of those for the other planets;)

We're trying to keep track of some of the information we've gathered in a planet chart. So this week we started writing in the chart... Lydia was just too precious with her chart. She told me when we started," Mommy, I like when we color and do maps, but I really like these things"... as she held up her chart:)




History
We started the week with more Viking invasions.... yay!! I actually was excited because we got to read through some more norse myths as well as bake our Viking Bread... finally:) And Hiccup even joined us in the kitchen for a bit:)

And we learned about some notable British and European leaders of the Middle Ages, like Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror and good 'ole Harold;) We had plenty to color and read;)

One resource I decided to purchase when we started the Middle Ages was Famous Men of the Middle Ages by Poland & Haaren (there are a lot of similar titles out there). I love how they compliment Story of the World and bring to life some of these characters that don't have much written about them for children (at least not what I have access to). Anna and I have read several chapters about different men together and I was pleasantly surprised when she could read almost 90% alone ... so now we can take turns reading:)


Other ( & what I learned this week)
I was soo thankful that some plans worked out for us to meet some homeschooling families from our homeschooling group at the park on Valentines Day. It worked out soo well, even with the crazy wind...

can I say that the wind messed with the parents more than the kids.... some loved chasing all the stuff each time we had a big gust. After the kids' example, the parents tried to not let it affect our time either. Amazing what our kids teach US each day and week!!

And on Friday we went to the park for another lunch meet up with Andrea and Shannon's crews! It was such a beautiful day here... I think at point the car thermostat said "80"!!! So nice;) Definitely worth focusing on the basics and leaving the rest for another day;)

Another week to remember;) To be thankful for all that was completed together;)
And I'm linking up to Weekly Wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
even though we got plenty of socialization this week:)