Going through the motions.

I don't know what it is but at the moment it sort of feels like we are doing school without any real excitement in the subjects. This isn't totally true. Sophie loves doing math when it relates to money and the boys have picked up on this and have counted and recounted the pennies in their piggie banks several times. They are even doing chores around the house to earn extra money to add to their stash. But other than Math I can't say we have really energetically studied anything.

We did our History lesson this week and it was about the Turks taking Constantinople and changing it into Istanbul but my kids really didn't get into the subject. We did read a few extra books. We had a good discussion about the book "The hungry coat". It was the most thought provoking of all the books we read through and the kids thought the story funny. I personally have really enjoyed reading a lot of these folk tales from the different countries we are studying. They almost always teach a good principle which is I guess why the stories have lasted through time. The part of the history lessons the kids liked the best was making the dancing bears which is one of the activities from the WTM activity book. I ended up putting them on sticks and the kids dance around with their arms and legs swinging around. I have only had to take they away once when they became swords. Boys make everything into swordplay.

Science was the same. We read some more books about rainforests but the kids kinda acted like "we've done this already". So I don't think our hearts were really into it.

Sophie did really well with her Language lessons this week. She enjoys reading and discussing the lesson from the McGuffey Reader and she doesn't usually mind doing the short assignments from the First Language Lessons book. She has even taken some of free time to write her own stories. Ian too is doing great with his Explode the code primer and has read a few of the passages from his McGuffey Reader. He is doing better at reading but isn't really driven like Sophie was to read. He would much rather just have me read to him.

We have done well with our New Testament studies. It really feels like we are moving very slowly through the book and it may take us two years to get through it. We are going story by story or parable by parable so we are certainly taking our time. But we are reading and everyone participates. We didn't work on a new Article of Faith this week. Ian didn't get to recite the 2nd one last week at church so we are still working on #2 but haven't been as diligent at is as we have been I will have to do better around practicing it at morning and evening prayers.

Friday ended up totally being a day off of school. We went on a hike with some friends in the morning and played at the park for a bit afterward. We were supposed to come home and do our school work but when we don't do school in the morning it just doesn't end up happening. Oh well we had a field trip day on Friday. I think that is alright.

February starts a new month and hopefully a new mindset. I will have to work on making our studies more exciting and engaging. We will be starting our study of the Universe and Space so maybe that will be spark our enthusiasm in that subject and it will spill over into the others. I think our main problem is that I have not been up for making things more fun. I need to get myself in order and be a more fun Mom. I just haven't felt very fun lately. My creativity is waning along with my energy I guess.