Starting again is a bit hard.

I can't say we had a really stellar week as far as school work goes. It is always hard to come back after a few weeks off. All the kids would rather just play and play and play rather than put their new toys away so we can read books and do math. But we did accomplish a bit this week.

We did read through our Story of the World Chapter about Ghingis Khan and the Mongols. We also read a bunch of other books. Some were recommended as go alongs and others, I just found on the shelf at the library.
My kids always enjoy the Reading Rainbow episodes that I find to go along with our studies. This time it was Liang and the Magic Paintbrush. I do somewhat regret getting the Disney version of Mulan from the library. There is a reason I hadn't seen it. It wasn't horrible but they put too many 20th century ideas and actions into it. The film just didn't quite catch the essence of the traditional chinese tale.

For science we did read a number of Ocean biome books. And watched another Reading Rainbow episode about Coral Reefs. (In explaining our week I think it is starting to sound like we watch a lot of movies. But really we just watch one movie a day. That is our rule.) Sophie really enjoyed piecing together these 15 sheets of paper into a mural and then coloring it.
The boys helped a bit with the coloring and they all helped color, cut out and glue on the different fish and such that went on the mural. Sophie tells me it is going to hang in her room when I decide to take it down.

Sophie couldn't wait to know who our composer for the month was going to be. I had originally thought we would wait until we did our History Chapter about Russia but I broke out this book and we listened to Pictures at an exhibition. We haven't actually read the book but we have listened to the music through twice. Sophie really likes it and tells me of what each song reminders her.

We did do math each day and Sophie is making her way through the book. She hates it when I pull out the textbook and actually do a lesson first. She always just wants to do the pages as fast as she can and then throws a fit when I ask her to look again at a few of the problems. Ian is still doing one exercise a day but it hard doing math with him when he can't read yet. I end up walking him through each problem. But at this stage I guess that is as it should be.

Language arts is where we really suffered this week. Sophie refused to do anything but her Beyond the Code book. She almost blew her top when I asked her to do some copywork, dictation or even just write her own story. The Beyond the code book is just so easy for her. I don't mind that she does it but it isn't enough and I don't want it to be everyday. So we are going to have to really work on this next week. She needs help with her penmanship and her sentence writing.

I think that is about all we accomplished. We did listen to a few audio books. We are currently listening to the first of The Sister's Grimm books, The fairytale Detectives. The kids have really enjoyed the first few chapters. It is a nice late afternoon activity and we tend to listen to it during those hours just before dinner when usually the kids just fight. It has helped me keep my sanity.

It could have been a better week but honestly it ended up better than I thought it would be.