A Lighter Week

I know when I type up my weekly reports it always sounds like we do so much. I know we do a lot but it doesn't feel like it while going through each day. There is a lot of play time and just hanging about. This week I allowed things to be a little lighter. I just didn't want the fights about math or the stress of trying to fit everything I had planned into each day. Science was the subject that suffered. It usually is. For some reason it is always the topic that I leave out when trying to scale back a little. Maybe because it is the most self directed of the subjects. I don't have a defined schedule to follow, just a general idea of what needs to be studied, so I don't feel like we get behind. I guess I would say we reviewed. We certainly discussed the clouds as we saw them roll in the last few days and this morning the kids were thrilled to finally get to check the rain gauge on our little weather station. We got a whole 2 millimeters of rain during the night but then it rained some more during the day and we didn't check it at night. Hurray for rain!

So for history we studied about Australia and New Zealand. We read a ton of books as usual.
The kids have poured over the Are we There Yet book. For some reason they really loved that one in particular. They were also to read Pumpkin Runner again. It was another of the FIAR books that they really enjoyed when we did last year. But I think we did a good job of covering who Aborigines were and what they were like.

Ian decided to give phonics a try this week. He actually started the Explode the Code primer that I have had sitting on the shelf for years. I bought it when Sophie was little thinking I would use it but Sophie never needed me to teach her how to read. She just suddenly did. So this primer has been waiting for someone to give it some attention. Ian did a few pages of finding the Letter F and tracing it and writing it.

He also did a few pages in his math workbook. This is great considering he hasn't wanted to do much of anything the last few weeks. But all the kids sat and did table work together a few days this week. Sophie didn't fight math this week either but the topic was different. After finishing her review she got to have a few days of working on measurements. She got to get out rulers and tape measures and do some more hands on math. She loved it.

I did introduce our composer for the next two months. We watched the Classical Kids DVD Bach Comes to Call. I can't say this story is as exciting as the Beethoven story but the kids liked it and I enjoyed listening to the music. Our Library only has the DVD and not the CD of this one. I was a little disappointed. But I have a lot of Bach music to play so we should be alright.

While at the library I found this on the library used book sale shelf.
I paid a whole dollar for it. Sophie has really enjoyed listening to it and following along with the included booklet. She is now singing Jesus Loves the Little Children, When the saints go Marching In, and He's got the whole World in His Hands in Spanish. It has been fun to listen to her sing along.

That is about it. No fun experiments or projects this week. I just didn't get things together. We didn't even do the map work or coloring pages for History. But we did read a lot of books together. It was a better week than we had the last.