"Farmer John" Cheese

Before I explain the title... our week went fairly well.  Pretty "normal" which is good.  No cool pictures this week...

Jayden

Well, Jay hit a wall in math.  He understands the concept of long division, but hates to put in the work.  Plus, like me, he's a "big picture" kind of kid and all the detail gets his goose.  So, after wading through the math bog early in the week, I told him he could do his math with me (usually he does it on his own) and that seemed to help.  I can help him catch his little errors and keep him focused.  It's more time I need to spend which isn't the greatest, but overall he's done with math quicker.  I'm thinking he'll get over this little bump and be fine in a bit... he understands the concepts so I'm not worried...

Writing has been going really well for Jayden.  I'm so glad over and over again that I didn't push it when he was younger.  He's really developing some good skills.  He did a three sentence dictation today beautifully.  This would have thrown him into hysterics in September.  He's almost through learning cursive so I may have him start to do some writing in cursive soon.

We are still on Gawain and the Green Knight.  It seems to take forever to get through a book since he only reads with me for 10 min/day.  I'm reconsidering him reading it out loud to me and maybe just have him read it to himself and we discuss it.  The thing that would make that hard is I would have to read everything first... and we do so much comprehension/vocab together as we read.  I don't think I'd do as good a job if he just did it on his own... so we go slow!

Kylie

Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary for Ky this week.  She continues to do a great job of getting everything done.  She also is a huge helper.  She's almost completed cursive learning as well and writing is going extremely well for her too.  Math gave her a bit of trouble this week starting multiplying 9's.  I think it's mostly because it's the first number she hasn't been able to skip count with.  She did just fine.  We did hit upon a huge thing today though.  She always complains about her math drill on the computer.  I finally got out of her that it's not the drill that bothers her... it's doing it on the computer.  (go figure...)  So, I asked her if flashcards would be better for her and yup... she said they would.  So... next week I'll put flashcards in her bin and that should solve that problem.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Rylan

Rylan is zooming along in math.  He just started subtraction and he's catching on well.  He's the kind of kid that doesn't need a lot of instruction.  Just give it to him and let him go.  I learned something with him in spelling early this week.  We got to our first "rules" instead of lists of words to write.  He didn't seem to me to even listen to me when I told him the rule so I **assumed** he didn't get it or didn't care.  More likely the second one!

So, two days went by (this was last Friday) and Monday I ask him the rule.  He could tell it to me right away.  He spelled all his words correctly ( a couple with reminders).  The thing I guess I have to remember with Rylan is that it **appears** that he isn't listening, but he really is.  He never reacts to what I say so I have a hard time figuring out when he's "got" something.  My other two are really easy to read in that way.  He really keeps me on my toes! 

Bryson

(Or Zip the Dog as he often times wants to be called!)  Bryson has had a good week.  His reading continues to improve.  I certainly see that working with a younger child reading just takes more time.  The older kids I didn't work with as much formally because there was always a baby to care for and toddlers... Bryson is the first one I've purposely sat down to teach to read at the age of 4.  He's doing great though!  We are almost through all the lowercase letters in handwriting.  He's working on adding in math.

I've been contemplating writing and Latin curriculum for next year.  I usually buy most of our curriculum in the spring after tax money comes in.  I'm going to add Classical Writing to the older two kids' load.  We'll do WWE 1/2 the weeks and CW the other 1/2.  I was thinking of changing Latin curriculum because I think it's boring, however... Jayden likes it and doesn't want to change so we'll keep it.  It's inexpensive compared to other curriculum I've looked at... it's simple and gets the job done.  We are not Latin centered here so it can't take up a huge amount of time.  I'll have two in different levels next year so I don't want to complicate things.

Okay.... so this week Grandma was with the kids and Bryson said something about wanting "Farmer John" cheese.  Grandma was a little confused, but thought it wasn't too weird as we get our dairy from a cow named Freda (yes, we know the actual cow... we just started getting real milk straight from the cow!!) and we get our meat from a gentleman we call "Farmer Paul".  So... Grandma didn't think it too strange, but she didn't realize we were getting cheese from anybody... so she asked Bryson what he was talking about.  The other kids said, "Oh, that's what he calls parmesan cheese!"  So, do you care for any "Farmer John" cheese on your spaghetti?  :-)