More Egypt and All the Rest

I think we finally have reached the end of our Egypt study. I am ready to move on to our next major civilization. Not that Egypt hasn't been fascinating. I thought I had learned a ton about Egypt when we studied it 4 years ago but this time through we have really immersed ourselves in stories about the people, their gods and tied it all together with some great fiction that only added to and reinforced our studies.

This week we spent a lot of time reading books about Akhenaten, Nefertiti and King Tut.

I read aloud this book which was a short chapter book about how the Egyptians may felt when Akhenaten changed things in Egypt and forced all to worship one god instead of the many gods they had been worshiped for thousands of years.

It was interesting but my kids are enjoying listening to the audiobook of The Red Pyramid even more.

Sophie couldn't wait for it to finish so started reading the physical book and has finished it already and has now started the 2nd book in the series. She can't wait for the third one to come out in the spring.

I know we aren't totally done yet with Egypt. We still have the story of Cleopatra which comes later when Rome takes over everything but for now I am happy with what we have been able to cover and am ready to move on to other things.

I think it might be time to head to the Egyptian Museum we have nearby. I have been saving it until we had finished learning and talking about Egypt but I think we may need to go soon before the excitement for all things Egyptian fades. 

We also finally wrapped our chicken mummy.

 Here is Cleopatra after sitting in salts for weeks and weeks.

 Sophie has been waiting to wrap this little chicken for weeks. I am so happy to finally have this project done. She can stop pestering asking me when we would wrap her.

We used some more of the plaster bandages that we had made our masks with a few weeks ago. It worked perfectly. She is now officially a mummy. Now what do we do with this Mummified hen? Sophie already has plans to make a sarcophagus. 

As for other subjects we have covered this week.....

Sophie has been doing something new in Math. Since she had finished her Singapore 5A book I thought she could use a break from the regular stuff she had been doing so I downloaded the Pet store version of Simply Charlotte Mason's business math.  She is flying through it really quickly.  Sophie has already done about 4 months out of the twelve that she will do with this series.  It is a bit hard to see her have to add all those columns of addition by hand when I know it would be so much easier with a calculator or even better if the records were kept on the computer and it did the adding for her. It is good for her to have to do a lot of math by hand!

The boys are still working on their Singapore math workbooks.

Science has been a bit hit and miss the last few weeks. It is always the subject that gets left out if we run short on time. I need to make sure we get it back into the schedule again. We didn't read any of our Apologia book. We should be doing the respiratory system.  It will have to be a focus for next week. The kids of course are getting some Science in at their workshop that they attend each Wednesday but I can't really say that is enough science so I need to squeeze in more.

Sophie is doing great with her IEW All things Fun and Fascinating. I really like this writing program! The lessons aren't as easily split up into weeks as Writing with Ease but I feel like Sophie is learning more about how to go about writing. Writing with Ease often felt like it was busywork.  Ian of course is still doing Writing with ease but I have ordered the IEW DVDs and the Student Writing Intensive so I may switch him soon and start it slowly since it is designed to start at about 3rd grade.  Henry is doing his Explode the code but he has reached the point that I remember feeling like Ian was done with them. Henry too is starting to show signs that he is ready for more.  So perhaps I need to switch Henry to something else.

The kids are learning Fur Elise in their piano class. And we have listened to a lot of Beethoven music and I turned on Fantasia a few days ago so they could see the Pastoral symphony. We watched the whole film because my kids love it.

 We also read the Venezia biography of Beethoven and listened to the Classics for Kids production of Beethoven Lives Upstairs.

And I guess I can claim some art because I put on a DVD tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the kids sat and watched it with me. They got very excited when they recognize Vermeer,  Matisse Van Gogh, or other paintings that we have studied in the past. 

We also added in a new Latin Program. I used our Charter school funds to purchase Minimus Latin. We have done the first lesson and my kids seem to enjoy the story so far. This isn't the program we wanted to use but since the Charter School turned down my first 3 choices, saying they are "sectarian" I was happy to find one that they actually would allow. We will have to see if this will work out. I may have to just break down and get the program I really want. But then I wouldn't be able to turn in any of the latin work we do for the portfolios each child has to turn in to the school each semester.

Oh... the charter school woes :) But I have to remember why I am doing it.

Piano lessons are going very well. The kids don't fight me about practice each day. They do often rush through and are sometime sloppy in their practice but their teacher is pleased with their progress and so am I.  It is a pleasure to hear them stop and play a little tune when they are passing the piano. I have also been teaching them the simplified version of For the Beauty of the Earth "just for fun". We have been singing a few of the Thanksgiving hymns each day and they asked me to help them learn this one. They all seem to have the right hand down so now I get to add in the left hand. Maybe by Thanksgiving they will each be able to play that one hymn.

Oh.. yeah.. one more thing for the week. We did something for P.E. Since Sophie is going to be running a mile in the spring as part of the required 5th grade physical fitness test I decided we should go to the track and run it, just to see how well they could do it. I used to hate having to run the mile in Elementary school. I always felt yucky after doing it. But since we are pretty active and take hikes quite often they didn't seem to have a problem at all.  We didn't run the entire 4 laps. I decided to start us off a little easier and only run the straights and walk the corners. That was the way I always did it all the way through high school. All the kids made it around that community center track 4 times and made it while pushing Molly in a stroller. If we make a habit of this I am going to need to do something different because it wasn't a jogging stroller and I kept kicking it or having to really watch my stride.

So that was our week,  and now I just need to get ready to head into the next.

Two Weeks Worth

I didn't do a report last week so I have two week so cover.

Lets start with History/Geography

My kids really enjoyed our study of India. We read tons and tons of books about India, watched a Bollywood film, played lots of parchessi, tried some curry dishes and then prepared our presentation for Co-op. We used three poster boards and each kids was supposed to present part of it. Sophie ended up doing the entire presentation because the boys got a little shy at the last moment.

We covered some of the Geography of the country, landmarks such as the Taj Mahal and K2, foods, dress, animals, music and religions of India.

I purposely planned our geography presentation to correspond with our chapter from Story of the World for the Week. So last week we read about the ancient Indian people that lived along the Indus River.

This week's History was a little mixed up. Somehow I thought it was supposed to be Africa next so I had the kids draw maps of the continent of Africa and we listened to and read a bunch of Anansi stories. Then when I got around to listening to the next chapter of Story of the World It was China next and then Africa. My kids didn't want to skip ahead to the next chapter before listening to the China Chapter so we ended up listening to both.  Next week we won't be moving but staying and reading all the books about China I have on the shelf. We also started a new Audio Book since we finished Theodosia. We are now listening to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
which is a Chinese story.

Sophie is very anxious to get to the next chapters of SoTW because we will be going back to Egypt and we will finally finish up our Chicken Mummy. We will see if I can hold her back one more week so we can give China a chance in our studies.

Science is going ever so slowly. We made it through the digestive system at last. There are a lot of different organs and such involved in that one system it took us a long time to get through it. This week we covered Nutrition. So we got to talk about carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water and how our body uses those items.

Writing is going alright. I can't say I am thrilled with how much my kids write. Ian just does his quick little Writing with Ease assignment and really doesn't like to do anything more. Sophie is doing much better with writing since we switched to IEW's All Things Fun and Fascinating. I feel like she is better learning how to put her thoughts down on paper. I love that it teaches outlining to begin with and builds from there. It has made a big difference.

I also have been teaching them a little more about compare and contrast essays/paragraphs since they have to do one for the Charter school this next month. I gave them the practice prompt and was pleasantly surprised that they did pretty well. I don't feel nearly as stressed about this assignment any more. 

Math plugs along as usual. The boys each are working through their workbooks. Sophie finished her Singapore 5A book this week. I am going to give her a break from Singapore of a bit and she is going to do Pet Store Buisiness math from Simply Charlotte Mason. Sophie was so excited to get started that she already did the start up section and will jump into the first month's business on Monday. Already I can tell she is going to LOVE this. Math used in a real life sort of way is so much more fun than a workbook. Ian want so badly to do a math unit like this but he isn't quite ready for it yet. He does sit with Sophie and plan things out with her and help her gather the information she needs.

Piano continues to go well. The kids practice every day. I have to push them but they don't fight it too much and I know they enjoy having little songs that they can play whenever they see a piano.

Artist/Musician study has happened but very informally. I have put on The Story of Beethoven when I start making dinner or when the kids are just playing legos. They have also listened to the Classics for Kids production of Beethoven Lives Upstairs. The kids are learning to play Ode to Joy and will be learning Fur Elise next week at the piano class so I thought it fitting that we should study Beethoven.  Our artist is Matisse. We have watched a video that I picked up at the library and that is all so far. I have a number of books to read and I know the kids will enjoy the art projects I have planned. I just need to fit them into our packed schedule.

So that is what we have been up to lately.

More or less of the Same

Our week went much like the weeks in the past. We hit all the normal subjects and did a lot of reading.

Math is still going fine with all the kids. Nothing too challenging at the moment. I am so glad my kids don't fight me about math anymore. Even Sophie does her math without too much complaint. She did have a little fit when I asked her to do a practice from the textbook. She always just wants to move onto the next subject but I have been having her do all the practices and reviews when we come to them to make sure she gets enough practice. She is starting to realize the practices tend to be short and easy so she actually gets an easy day of math on those days. Reviews can sometimes be rather long and then we split them between two days so she really shouldn't complain.  I am not as good about having the boys do reviews and such from their textbooks. We don't even use their textbooks very often so I don't see the practice problems. We just jump right into the workbook. Once the math gets a little more challenging this will change I am sure.

Writing is going well. Sophie is doing great with All Things Fun and Fascinating.  Ian is working through Writing with Ease.  But I feel like I am doing a lot of coaching to get him to come up with the few sentences about the book passage.  Henry finished Explode the Code 3 1/2 this week.  It isn't good to compare but Ian was reading better and writing better by the time we got to this point with ETC.  Henry is just  different kid. He reads pretty good but has no desire to read unless I am asking him to. I keep hoping that reading gene will kick in. He has some maturing to do before that. We will keep going with ETC 4 and see how it goes.

We finished up the digestive system this week. It is taking us a long time to get through each system of the body. Longer than I had originally planned but my kids are enjoying all experiments and worksheets so I am not going to worry about how long it takes to get through. I would rather go slowly and really learn it than try to race through and drag the kids along.  We have been adding in parts and organs to an outline of Henry and the boys love cutting out pieces and figuring out where they fit. The stomach area has quite a few layers already since the kidneys and such are behind some of those digestive organs. The parts they cut out of construction paper are a bit too big for Henry's body but they don't seem to care. It is a project they have taken over and are enjoying.

In History this week we again read about Assyria. Henry still says he doesn't know what Mesopotamia means but he LOVED the story of Gilgamesh. The books we borrowed from the library were big hits and I found he looking at all the pictures again and again this week. I think Henry is just in that phase where he just soaks up the stories and could care less about the names and dates and places. Give him a good adventure story and he will be good to go. Ian is much the same but he actually remembers a lot of the details too. Sophie usually has everything read and in her head before we even read the chapter or pull the books off the shelf. She reads everything I bring home from the library before we ever get to them for school.

We added in some Geography this week. We are doing a geography presentation in our co-op next week so we got started on that project. We choose India so have been reading lots of books about India. Here are a few of them. We got more when we went to the library this week.  So we have been learning all about the climate, topography, culture, religions and such about India. We are making some posters to help with our presentation which I will post next week when we are finished. And of course we bought parchessi and the kids are having a great time with that.  Our history subject next week from Story of the World is Ancient India too. So we will be very prepared for that.

The kids are all doing great with Piano. I have to encourage practice but they usually do it without complaint. The only complaint they do have is when I try to correct them when they make a mistake.  They hate it when I come to the piano to show them where they fumbled and point them in the right direction.

We are still working on Theodosia books and the kids have started the Four Story Mistake which is the 2nd of the Melendy books. We had our book discussion at co-op about The Saturdays and all the kids seemed to like it. I hope they like the book I picked for next month. We already have the Audio book of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon we should start it soon because it is a little longer than books we have read for co-op in the past.

That is about it for this week. It was another busy week.

Week in Review

I don't know how people can get so much work done in a week. We seem to go and go but barely get done what we do get done while leaving a bunch of stuff still undone. But here is our run down for the week.

Lets start with the fun stuff. The Read aloud and Audio books.

I read Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos to my kids. I had fun doing the British accents. The kids loved the story and would beg me to read more and more.  Lots of good information about Ancient Egypt and mummies as well as some magic and adventure.  I got the audio book for the 2nd book in the series and Sophie told me she likes me reading it better. She didn't like the accent of the reader or something. The readers was most likely more authentic. We are now about half way through Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris. We have it going in the car and I am afraid it caused us to be late to our co-op's hike. I was so engrossed in the story I missed our exit and it took us about 15 min to realize the mistake and get back on track.  There are two more books in the series and I am sure we will make it through them quickly.

In the house I have started a new read aloud. This one is for our co-op Book Club, which I am the leader of.  I picked the book The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. This has been a fun read so far. Each chapter is another Saturday in the life of the Melendy family. My kids are really enjoying it.  I am able to use the "clean up the front room so I can read about another Saturday" trick. I love it when they like books that much. They consider it such a treat to have me read aloud to them.  This one takes place in NYC so no British accents but I still try to give each character it's own voice or style.

So.... from here we will head into the more mundane and less fun subjects.

Math - All kids are working through Singapore books. Sophie is happy she isn't multiplying and dividing fractions anymore. She has moved into a geometry section. I am sure fractions will jump in again but for now it is a nice break.
Ian finished a section on place value and will start something new on Monday.

Henry always seems to be adding and subtracting. I hadn't really thought about how little variety his math has. They try to vary it with little mazes or puzzles but it is still adding and subtracting.

History - We listened to our chapter of SOTW but I can't say we did much else. It was a chapter about Babylon and Hammarabi. Other than map work and drawing a ziggurat we didn't really do much to go along with the chapter. I do have some books on the shelf but we just never seemed to get to them.

Writing - I started a new writing program with Sophie.  It wasn't that I didn't like Writing with Ease but I just felt like she needed something different. It was starting to seem like busy work. So this week we started All Things Fun and Fascinating which is one of the offerings from the Institute for Excellence in Writing.  We did the first two lessons this week and all the practice to go along with it. These were about outlining. And she got it.

Ian is still doing Book 2 of the WWE program and seems to be doing fine with that for now.

Henry is still plugging away at his Explode the Code.

We also looked at two Vermeer paintings and learned how to compare and contrast. The kids made Venn diagrams about The Geographer and The Astronomer.

So this could count as art but I am including it in Writing since it was an exercise to help prepare them for a compare and contrast writing assignment they are going to have to do for the Charter School.

Science - We read some more about the Digestive system. We still haven't made it all the way through and will take another week to finish off this system. I am finding it hard to get more than two days a week of science because we also have our Science workshops that the kids attend. The boys got to see and handle cow hearts at theirs this week. Sophie is raising fruit flies and learning about genetics.

We also made our masks which I talked about the other day and watched some Tin Tin cartoons on Youtube. There was also some Wii Fit and other Wii games that got played because it was raining and we needed to use some of our energy in a more constructive way.

Logic -  I added in some logic workbooks this week. Henry complained a bit since it was "yet another workbook" but it was super easy and he discovered he could fly through three or four lessons rather quickly. He will finish his Lollipop logic book really quickly I think. Ian has Primary Logic and Sophie is doing the Countdown to Logic. These lessons take about 5 min but I hope as they get harder it will help the kids reason through problems. We will see, it is still an experiment.

Piano - The kids are doing great with piano. They practice everyday and I really like having the lesson on Monday and then we watch the DVD lesson on Tuesday to cement what they learned at the lesson and then they have a few days to practice. I need to make sure we get that DVD lesson in on Tuesdays. My kids are going to feel very prepared for their lesson on Monday since they have actually spent a few days practicing the new song rather than we watch it Monday before their lesson, which is what has happened a few times.  So that is my goal for the future. Make that lesson a part of the Tuesday schedule.

That was about it for our week.  Not too shabby. There is still a lot that I wish we could somehow squeeze in but for now this is good.

Our Schedule is Full

I feel like we have over loaded our schedule. We have stuff planned for every day of the week. When I say stuff it is classes, activities or events on every single day. There isn't even one day where don't have something we are committed to doing or being at.

After a full day of school work my kids have music lessons on Monday. These are going very well by the way. My kids are playing songs and the method seems to be working well especially for Henry. Sophie catches onto songs rather quickly and Ian, when he is able to get practice in, works hard to master the songs. But Henry doesn't like my help and seems to squirm through the lessons but ends up playing the songs just fine when asked to play. It is sort of strange?!

On Tuesday Sophie has choir in the afternoon. She loves to sing and this choir gives her a chance to be with older kids who sing and play music. I consider this good exposure to kids that I wouldn't mind my kids emulating.  While Sophie is singing I take the boys and Molly shopping nearby. Thank goodness for a Target just down the street where we can waste an hour. Then we rush home so I can change and get to my Cycling class at the YMCA. I love this class and the kids play at the Kids Corner.

Science Class started this week on Wednesday. Ian and Henry are doing some hands on Anatomy and Physiology while Sophie gets to study Genetics and raise fruit flies. This of course means I have two hours, one with Sophie and Molly while the boys have their class and then another hour with Molly and the boys while Sophie has hers. I need to bring some work for the kids to do on their hour out of class to help the time pass more quickly. I am going to have to work on this.
Wednesday is also park day, so we have to rush home after science classes and squeeze in a few hours of work before heading to the park to play with friends.

Thursday has been our Library day for years.  The kids get to spend their hour on the computer playing Mooshie Monsters, Webkins, or Lego games while I play Reader Rabbit on the computer, legos (the library just got rid of the puzzles and put in a duplo lego table) or read books with Molly.
Sophie also has Activity girls Thursday night to which all the kids go. (My husband goes to the gym while we are out) There are usually a bunch of other siblings also at the church and my boys feel deprived if they don't get to go and play with their friends at the church.

Friday is Co-op. My kids LOVE Co-op. I get to teach classes for the littlest kids once or twice a month and lead the book club once a month. The kids get to run, play and sing with a bunch of other homeschooled kids.  I can't say much of Co-op is academic. It is mostly a chance for these kids to do things together in a group. They sing once a month at a nursing home too so there is a little service done as well.

So that is all the extras we have put into our schedules. I don't know how we have time to put everything else in. But somehow we get a lot of school work and life work done along with these things.

In History we finished up our chapter on Mummies and Pyramids.

In Science we are working on the Muscular System.

In Math Sophie is doing Fractions, Ian is working on Money and Henry is still working on Place Value.

Henry is working through Explode the code and beyond the code.

Sophie and Ian do Writing with ease one week at a time.

We are listening to a an audio book about Cleopatra and I am reading aloud Theodosia and the serpent of Chaos.

And we are plugging away the the Book of Mormon each day and are almost through 3 Nephi.

We even added in the Family Proclamation into our devotional time and focused mainly on the plan of Salvation.

Oh yeah.. I can claim some P.E. as well. My kids have been outside jumping rope and shooting hoops quite often now that the weather seems to be a bit cooler.

Letting things Slip

This ended up being a somewhat haphazard week. My husband had Monday off so my kids decided we all needed to have a holiday. We still read our Scriptures and some chores but Henry was very excited to play his new wii games that he got for his birthday.

The kids did start their new piano lessons on Monday afternoon. It is a group class and since all of them are pretty much at the same level it should work for now. It is a play based program rather than reading based. So the kids are learning to play songs first and then they will be taught to read the music. They have spent the week playing their new song over and over again. There is a DVD that the teacher sent us home with that goes over many of the things the kids learned at their lesson.

The rest of the week we did some of the normal things each day but we added in Choir and Co-op on their days, which added more places to be at a certain time. I am starting to feel like a chauffeur and we still have Science class to add in next week. I am feeling a little over scheduled. At least my kids all participate in these things together so I only have to go once to each rather than multiple classes.

We also had our excursion down to Santa Cruz and the Beach on Thursday which ate up most of that day. So we have had a hard time getting everything else into the hours we have left at home. I am starting to see that home schoolers don't often spend a lot of time at home.

We did start our chapter of Story of the world. We listened to the bit about mummies and started Cleopatra's mummification. We never made it to Pyramids which is the 2nd half of the chapter.

Science was just finishing up our lesson on the Skeletal system. We did do some workbook pages  and read the section about joints.

We only did three out of four days of Writing with Ease. This is becoming a habit. We end up skipping one of the assignments so we can start each week with a new story or reading. Dictation is usually the one we leave out.

We always fit in Math. That is the easiest subject lately to get my kids to do. The boys get to work on theirs without me and Sophie has a quick lesson on the new topic and then gets to work. I am around to keep them on task but that is about it.

We didn't do any Story Quest this week. We just couldn't fit it in. I will have to make sure we squeeze it in next week.

I also haven't been having my boys read aloud to me each day like I have in the past. They do read scripture aloud but usually I have Henry and Ian read a book to me. I need to get this back into our day. Henry really needs the practice.

We didn't do anything with our artist or musician. This always seems to get left out.

So I feel like we are letting a lot of things slip. We do still get a bunch of books and reading in each day so I know we are fine. I just can't seem to keep up with all the housework, classes and activities we have on the schedule.  I will have to reevaluate everything and see what we can do differently or maybe I am feeling this way because things are just getting started and we haven't found our groove yet. Once this becomes routine  hopefully I won't feel so frazzled and can see where to fit in some of those things we have recently been letting slide. 

Next week is full of possibilities!