A slower week

I have to admit that we didn't do nearly as much school this week as we usually do. We did a few art projects. Read a lot of Halloween and fall books, played a lot of dress up, and trains again. (Henry has become a big train lover! He gets so excited when we get the trains out and he also always insists that we get a Thomas the Tank Engine video when we go to the library). Ian of course had his strings tied to everything and Bob the builder was busy fixing and flying and swinging.

But as for School this week.... we Rowed a book. YEAH! I picked one that I knew the boys would love and they did. We rowed Andy and the Lion. Very cute book. We read the book while each child had a little plastic lion in their hands. We read books about lions. Ian already knew the Daniel in the Lions Den story (They do have lessons in Nursery!) but we read it again from the children's old testament book. We read a few go along books about the lions in front of the NY Library. I really enjoyed rowing this week. The boys were much more involved in school time.

Sophie is really struggling with math. It isn't that she can't do it she just doesn't want to do it. She doesn't want to have to work out the answers. So she often throws a fit saying "I can't do it, It is too hard". So we forgot about the Singapore workbook this week and just played games again to review. I did have her right out the addition tables. I am hoping if we repeat it enough she will eventually have them memorized. We read a book about addition.

We started our study of the Circulatory system. We read through a book we got from the library about the heart and arteries and veins. All the kids loved it when I broke our our blood pressure cuff. I tried it on the kids but it is meant for adults so it didn't really work. But they loved being able to hear each others heartbeats with a stethoscope. We will continue with the Circulatory next week. I was late getting books until our Thursday library day so we haven't had much time to study it fully.

I started our history chapter this week. Sophie didn't feel like finishing the chapter and we didn't end up getting back to it. So again we have to finish the story of Gilgamesh next week.

Sophie practiced writing her full name. She had trouble with the middle name. She has never written it before. Again we had a huge tantrum about how it was just too hard. I don't understand why she throws tantrums but it is something I am really trying to work on. We really need to figure out how to keep her from getting so frustrated but at the same time challenge her a little.

We also started studying poetry. We got a great book from the libray called A Child's introduction to poetry. It looks like it is put out by the same publisher as A story of the Orchestra which we went through last year. We listened to the first two sections this week with the CD that came with the poetry book. The first section was on Nursery Rhymes and Sophie knew all the Rhymes that they had in this book. (I guess we have read through some nursery rhymes in the past). The next section was on Nonsense poems and of course Sophie got so excited when she heard the man recite her favorite poem ever, "The Jabberwocky". She still knows it word for word.

I haven't introduced our composer or artist for November. It will be nice to have a change. We are going to be studying Mary Cassatt's artwork and listen to Aaron Copland music. I thought these two would be good for November.

So even through it felt like a slow week. Maybe we did end up doing more than I thought. It is always amazing how much education you can squish into a short time. It left us we all sorts of play and destroy the house time.

Oh... and I almost forgot. After our earthquake on Tuesday night. Sophie found Bill Nye the Science Guy's episode about Earthquakes at the library. Ian and Sophie watched that and learned all about earthquakes.