Zoom!

Wow, did this week fly by!  I didn't teach violin lessons on Monday, no baseball this week and nice weather for the pool made this week just zip!  We did get in three days of school again which I'm glad about.  I started rotating who goes first with me and that hasn't been working the best for the littles.  They tend to get very distracted if they are allowed to go off and "do chores" ahem.... (play) before school.  It's nice for Jayden and Kylie that they don't have to be last all the time though. 

I'm trying to pull together a "loop schedule" for August/Sept. when we start back with more subjects.  I think this will solve the problems I'm having now because the boys will have more to do.  A very nice person from the WTM boards is helping me flesh out a schedule.  (Thanks Michele!)  I'm hoping this will alleviate two issues we have.  One is the issue of Jayden and Kylie always getting their one-on-one time later in the day... by then, whoever gets my attention at 1pm is DONE and so am I!  Also, I'd like to make sure we are getting to all the subjects (namely art and science) that we need to.  The loop will help with that.  I'm still not sure about the execution, but we'll see....

We are enjoying reading about King William and knights and castles in history.  In science we read books to do with stars and watched a great video on stars. 

I'm finding that the holes I'm trying to fill with Jayden and Kylie in math are significant in the area of geometry.  The measuring topics are coming rather easily to both of them, but both of them are struggling a bit with the geometry topics.  It's a good workout for their brains though.  Makes them use different skills than what they've been used to. 

It's a little difficult only doing grammar and spelling once a week.  It's not as cohesive... I may rethink this plan next summer in regards to those subjects... maybe we'll just drop them altogether?  Writing continues to go well with all the kids.  Bryson has graduated to copywork instead of a handwriting book.  He has enjoyed copying sentences that had to do with our history this past week.

We are just finishing up Dr. Doolittle on audio.  The kids have really enjoyed this story.  Everybody wants to listen to The Secret Garden next, but I have a feeling the boys don't really know the story line... do you think it will hold the attention of  9, 6 and 5 year old boys?  I just can't remember that much about the story.

No picts this week.. I'm so bad!  However, Rylan had some firsts this week!  He is starting to swim, yeah!! And he got to go down both big water slides at the pool!  He was SO proud of himself!  Kylie got to go to her best friend's house in Iowa last weekend and had a blast!  She is VERY independent so this was nice for her to be able to get away a bit on her own! 

Oh and what happens when your 8 year old spells "pennies" like this:

P-e-n-i-e-s

and you ask her to fix it so the "e" stays short.... and she for some reason fails to add another "n" as you wanted her to and she takes out the 2nd "e"????  Heh, heh... we both had a long laugh over that one!  I don't think she'll forget how to spell "pennies" ever!