weekly highlights

OK, so I said that I was gonna do school everyday, well....... Does only math on Tuesday still count as school? I did school school every other day, but that day I went grocery shopping and hit a million stores while Hubs helped them with math.

We are loving our Geography game that comes with ECC. Sassy struggles, but Little man and I try to beat each other, while Sassy tries to read the names for us. Even though next week we start Africa, we still haven't mastered Europe. But we are getting a general knowledge of where the countries are, so that's all that matters.

We were moving kinda slow through our Olympic lapbooks, but to day we plowed through a bunch of it. Little man likes it, and again Sassy is being a stinker. I think the task of reading frustrates her. Oh well. She'll get it when she gets it. She did like the word search though. I have to find more for her. Or I can just use this site and make our own. I think I'm actually gonna do this for our spelling words. Little man will do much better if he gets to practice them like this. Sassy got excited when I showed her the one I made this morning with all the countries we're learning in Europe. I made an extra master copy, for later in the year.



This is the first of three lapbooks that we've done. I'll get a picture of the rest when we're done. I was in the process of taking bread out of the bread maker and sticking it in the oven, so we didn't ge as far as I wanted. :) Such is life.

I started Phonics Pathways with Sassy this week. So far, she's more confused than before. But we're gonna keep at it. It's hard for her to learn the first two letters as opposed to word families.
So far she's done Sa-se-si-so-su, Ma-me-mi-mo-mu, Na-ne-ni-no-nu, Ra-re-ri-ro-ru. I review previous letters and teach another letter each day. I decided to give her a penny for every lesson she does without complaint. So if we get two new letters done in a day she gets two pennies. Then when the jar is full, I'll take her to the penny candy store near our house. Candy is the key word around here. :) I am determined to have her confidently reading by next school year.

Little man is trying my patience with reading also. He can read, but doesn't like to. He says it's boring. I get every book he asks for from the library. I think a trip to the library is due for us today. He will find books that interest him. :)

Usually at this time of the year, I feel like giving up, but not this year. I'm having fun staying home and teaching. They actually want to stay home, which helps. In the past we were always going somewhere and always falling behind. But we're figuring it all out this year. I think it helps that they are older now. Sassy just turned 8 last Friday, so I think she wants to learn. And the promise that she can join American Heritage Girls next year helps a bit also. :)

Hope your week went well.

Monday fun

Today, we actually got everything done. We even did two parts of our Olympic lapbook. We learned about the stadium and the prizes. I'll be taking pictures of them for my weekly review.

And today we had a special dinner. Rachlette(pronounced rock-lay). It requires special cheese, of the same name. You place different meats on the top grill, and different veggies, covered with the cheese, underneath the grill in special trays. It's actually a Swiss dinner, but since we were doing Europe, this would work great. We have a friend who's from Switzerland, and he introduced us to this. It's a great meal to have company over. It takes a long time to eat. Your food can digest and you can have lots of conversation. We like it cuz no one has to get up for anything. All the food is in front of you, it's perfect. :) I wish I thought of taking a picture when it was covered with food, but I was too busy eating. :)




I'm hoping the rest of the week is equally fun.

Olympic lapbook

This isn't much of a weekly recap. But here it goes.

With the Olympics starting very soon, some of my friends were looking for lapbook ideas. One of my friends in my homeschool group sent this to us. I bought it. It looks so cool. Here's the site.I can't wait to start next week. It says it can take up to a month to do all of it. But, I plan on doing it in less. I also have Mario and Sonic at the winter Olympic games, that we're gonna do with school also. The kids are gonna be surprised when they get to do the Wii during school. I am gonna earn brownie points with them. :)

I've been sick all week AGAIN! I feel like bricks are sitting on my cheeks. So, needless to say, we didn't do school this week. They did do some math. So now Sassy is done with Alpha and is taking next week to do only online drills. She is super excited. Little man has 5 more weeks to go, then he can take a week off before he starts Gamma. It's only fair.

OK, I'm off to steam my face again. Have a good weekend.