School review

We had a really good week. Of course it was a little shortened due to Monday being a holiday and we were out of town. We also have been a little sick with colds but it hasn't slowed us down at all. In fact this week we didn't have nearly as much complaining (at least about school).

Sophie is doing much better at math. We have started doing subtraction and just for fun, since it wasn't in the Singapore math book yet, we learned how to add multi-digit numbers. Sophie totally caught on to this which surprised me. I started by showing and pointing out the columns, ones, tens, hundreds. And as we tried to do a few problems together she got the whole carry the one and add it in when you add up the next column. She got so excited about it that when Dad came home she had to show him how she could do it. She was very proud of herself and feels good about math again. So this is great since she was saying she wasn't good at it for so long. I really don't want her to hate math so we are going at her speed and so things are looking up.

Sophie also decided that we would study the brain this week. I had gotten books to study the lungs and respiratory system but she wouldn't hear of that and only wanted to study the brain so we did. We read a few books about the brain and got a few more when we went to the library.

We listened to the Aaron Copland episodes at Classics for Kids this week. Sophie even requested to listen to the Copland music while doing a project and again later in the week when the kids were just playing. So she is enjoying his music!

We did a little of the First Language Lessons informally. Neither one of us really loves these. I really need to look into finding something different. We are still working through our introduction to poetry book and read a bunch of Limericks this week.

Our history this week took us to ancient India and I really enjoyed this. I learned a lot that I know I never studied in school. We read a number of good library books that take place in india or that tell about india. I wanted to find the Sauri that I was given while on my mission but never did find it. I know India will come up again in our studies so I will have to keep looking for it. Sophie wrapped a blanket around herself and said it was a sauri.

I think we have officially seen all the Signing Time movies now. We got another one this week that we hadn't seen before. The kids are still enjoying these and they sign a lot too.

We didn't row a book this week. I have collected a number of Thanksgiving books and we have been reading through those with all the kids. Sophie even read aloud the Magic Tree House book Thanksgiving on Thursday to us this week.( She is on a Magic tree house kick again. She also read Tigers at Twilight to herself since that one takes place in India. ) I also found a book of Thanksgiving Riddles that Sophie has been reading. She loves riddles but often needs me to explain them. She can't quite understand the play on words a lot of times. We haven't done enough crafts to go along with our Thanksgiving books. I found some build a turkey with stickers that the kids had fun doing. I just don't seem to have the energy to break out craft stuff at the moment. But we did go to the park and find pine cones so we can make some pine cone turkeys next week.

I finally got around to cooking up my pumpkins. They were supposed to go along with the Pumpkin runner from last week but just didn't do it. So this week I cooked the pumpkins and decided to make pumpkin soup. None of us liked it. The recipe called for Bell peppers and they overpowered the flavor. We had some great homemade bread to go with the soup and that was tasty but the soup was a bust so I know now not to make that pumpkin soup recipe again.

The YMCA has started a Jr. Fitness Frenzy class on Tuesday and Thursday that Sophie and Ian can both attend. They have enjoyed it the last few weeks so we I count that as PE. Ian had his last Soccer game today so that is now over (Yippee! I don't like having games every Saturday).

It was a good week. I felt like we accomplished a lot and didn't have as much trouble getting it all in each day. We even started to do 20 min of silent reading. This isn't something that has worked before for us but now Henry goes down for a nap and we have 20 min of quiet while we all can read books. Ian sometimes plays but is quiet. But Sophie loves to "read like Mom". She says this to mean that she reads silently to herself. For the longest time she didn't understand that I was reading without saying the words. But she now does it too.