Weekly Wrap-Up: 8/30- 9/3

This was our second full week back and I've already had to make some adjustments to our schedule. I wanted us to all be starting school at the same time, but it just wasn't working. We started out trying to begin the morning with our read aloud books. Like I had hoped, the kids were much more ready to start school in the morning since our reading time is their favorite part. It seemed to be working well at first when Colin was doing review sheets for math, but as soon as he was back to regular lessons and needed me to get him started, it fell apart. It's just too hard for me to have 3 kids working on things that need me. I think I'm wasting more time going back and forth between them and confusing one because I'm talking to the other.

Colin gets up earlier than the girls so for the last couple days I decided to get him started first. We do spelling, grammar and/or writing, and math together. Then he works on his own to do math worksheets and any grammar or writing lessons he needs to complete. He's easily distracted by the girls so I feel like we're getting things done much quicker than when they're in the room with us.
Then I get Caleigh and go through the same thing with her. Once she's working on her math worksheet, I move on to Molly. By then it's usually time for lunch. After lunch, we'll do subjects that we all do together. I'm sure there will be further tweaking to this schedule as we more into the books and some lessons get longer. I'm also hoping to find a more independent math program for Colin once he finishes this one in the next few months.

History

Finished up our ancient Egypt study. You can see more about what we did here.
We started reading the SOTW chapters to go with the Greeks.

Spell to Write and Read
Colin- I decided to start Colin back at list S. We're only doing 10 words a day and we're not doing much of the extra activities since we've done many of them before and he's doing another writing and grammar program. He finished 2 lists this week and tested on them.
Caleigh- Caleigh did the consonant/vowel reference page. I started her back with A and she finished that list and tested.

Molly- working on learning the phonograms

RightStart Math
Colin-most of his lessons were on decimals. He's also doing some problems each day from Challenging Word Problems.
Caleigh- She's still in the reviewing stage of a new book.
Molly- Her lessons are focusing on seeing numbers 1-10 without needing to count.

Molly using the abacus and tally sticks for math

Art
Artistic Pursuits lesson 21 that you can see more about in my Egypt post.
Artistic Pursuits lesson 2. We were supposed to go out to observe and draw sketches for the first part of this lesson. I took the kids to a lake today to do it.

Artists at work

Pictures made with watercolor crayons

Writing
Colin- Started Writing Tales again. It got skipped most of last year so we started back at the beginning. He finished the first section this week.
Molly- starting on Handwriting Without Tears, practiced letters in salt box and on chalkboard, working on the way she holds her pencil
Caleigh- she hasn't started anything yet because I wanted her to get farther into spelling before starting cursive

Grammar
Colin- since he's at the beginning of a new book, it's all review still (nouns, pronouns mostly)
Caleigh- I'm trying to get her through the repetitive stuff quickly so she did 8 lessons in 4 days

Science
We're waiting on our caterpillars to arrive so we can start our butterfly study. It's been 4 weeks since I sent for them so I'm starting to worry that there's a problem.

Extra Stuff
We went to our homeschool group's park day today. There weren't nearly as many kids there as usual. The kids played for a little while and then we went over to the lake for our art lesson.

Colin had his first official First Lego League meeting on Wednesday. They spent some time coming up with name ideas, some of which were very interesting. After a vote, some of them still weren't sure about the winning name so I think they're going to discuss it again next week to see if anyone has new ideas and hopefully agree on something. They spent the rest of their time working on putting together pieces that will be on the table.

Checking the computer to see what pieces they need

See the table full of Legos

Colin searching the bags for needed pieces

Visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what other homeschoolers have been up to this week.