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.