A better week

This week seemed to go a little easier. I focused on getting grammar and writing to go a little better then we have been doing in the past. It has seemed to be hard to motivate Sophie in particular to do writing the last few weeks. She doesn't want to sit at the table any more after doing Math but it is hard to bring her back to the table to do some writing after we have done some history, science or other subject. Usually we have started our day with math but this week I figured we would start with our Language Lesson and reading. It has worked out so much better. The language lesson goes smoothly for the most part (she still complains if she has to copy too many sentences and such.) And we have been doing Math after lunch which seems to be working out alright. It is what we "finish" our school time with. So that has been a success.

This week has been Queen Elizabeth week. We reviewed Henry VIII's 6th wives and their children and fates and then learned about Edward, Mary and Elizabeth's reigns. We read a few books, watched a few movies and Sophie even drew a number of pictures of Elizabeth. Now every Red haired queen she draws is Elizabeth. We especially enjoyed a few audio books. We listened to Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the house of Tudor by Kathryn Lasky. It was all told in Elizabeth's voice through a diary she kept. We watched the movie that goes along with it as well after listening to it. They loved seeing what they had just heard.

I can't say we did any science this week. We didn't even study any new birds. Maybe science will have to next week's focus.

Ian is doing very well with his Explode the code book. We only do one page a day, if I try to get him to do more then I can tell he looses interest. A lot of each lesson is repeated on each page so he feels like it is exactly what he just did. So one page a day plus trying to read a few sentences from his McGuffy Reader is about all I can ask of him.

He is also doing very well in Math. His writing is still slowing him down. He writes a lot of his letters backward and I usually have him erase and write it correctly but this makes everything take a long time and he doesn't get much farther than a page or two. He is doing well with the actual addition it is mostly the writing part that is still holding him back but we are working on it.

Sophie's Math has been going well. She doesn't seem to struggle with the multiplication and division too much. This week has been multiplying and dividing 4s. Staying focused has always been her struggle. We also made laminated number charts, 1-100, and the kids have had a good time practicing skip counting on these. Playing with markers is always a big hit.

This report doesn't seem like much but it sure feels like we did a lot. We sure played a lot of games and read a lot of books and Audio books have almost constantly been on but I can't think of anything to report here as far as formal schooling goes.

I guess we do a lot of our "schooling" informally.