Weekly Report - A Months Worth

I haven't been diligent about writing up our weekly reports. Maybe because there isn't all that much to report so I don't feel motivated to document our lack of academics. But I figure it is time to come clean with our report.

November came and went really quickly. I don't know exactly what happened or what we got accomplished. I know we "did school" each day which means we started with pledge, prayer, scripture, songs and memorizing the Living Christ. (We are doing great by the way! Only 2 and a half more weeks to do....we will make it for Christmas if we keep it up!)

The rest of the days from here get a little sketchy. I know we have done math everyday or at least almost everyday.  Sophie is enjoying decimals way more than she did fractions. Math is "so easy" for her lately, as long as she remembers her multiplication tables.  Ian too is doing well with his math. He doesn't love subtraction and has gotten it in his head that story problems are no hard. He has the habit of asking for help before he even opens the book. I have to remind him that he needs to actually read the problem and think about it before asking me to help him.  I put Henry on hold with Math. He needed me to read everything for him so, just like I did with Ian, I have him just doing reading practice mainly and skipping the math for now.

Speaking of reading.... Henry is getting quite good at sounding out words. He has read all the books in the first Bob Books box. He is now moving on to such things as Hop on Pop and Go Dog Go. Ian too is doing great reading and has almost finished his Explode the Code 3 1/2. He has decided he doesn't need to do any more Explode the code after this book since he can read now. But I am still debating. I can see the benefits of continuing. Sophie's spelling is awful because she never did any phonics training. Ian can spell so much better than she can and I think it is because he has had these books go through some of the rules of phonics. So we will see.


I can't say we have been doing any formal history or science the last little while. My kids have continued to build all the different projects from the Knex Simple Machines kit but I don't know if that actually counts as science. We have listened to the first few chapters of Story of the World. My kids requested it one day. They miss Jim Weiss' voice, I guess. But we did some of the map work to go along with the chapters.  We also read a number of Thanksgiving books. Those count as history, right?!

So now it is December and I have been collecting all sorts of Christmas books from the library shelves and we have been going through them, a few each day.

This was the stash we read on Dec 1st.  My boys love the Snowmen at Night. It isn't Christmas but is a fun winter book.  A wish to be a Christmas Tree was my favorite for the day.  It had lovely illustrations of birds and such as well as a nice Christmas message.

And since Dec 2nd was Hanukkah we read a few books about that holiday. Hanukkah at Valley Forge was especially a good one.

Today we listened to our Audio book a lot. We are listening to When Santa Fell to Earth by Cornella Funke. We are almost finished and my kids really enjoy it.

Tonight we broke out the Christmas tree and the nativities. It is supposed to rain this weekend and even into next week so I figured now was a good time to drag out the Christmas boxes before having to deal with rain and mud.

While the kids played with the Playmobile nativity they asked me to read some of Hark a Christmas Sampler. Sophie evidently has already read through it because she knew exactly which stories she wanted me to read.

So that is some of what we have been up to. Mostly just hanging out reading and reading.