Weekly Wrap-Up

We did things a bit differently this week.  Previously, I just kept a weekly schedule arranged by subject, not by day, i.e., all readings, assignments, etc., to be completed that week.  I was afraid that if I had a daily schedule, I'd feel like a failure if we didn't get EVERYTHING done for that day, so I stuck with a weekly schedule.  For some reason, though, this week I decided to print out a daily/weekly schedule for each of my daughters and for me.  And, shock of all shocks, it worked nicely.  We kept on task a bit more, and the girls had more "ownership" over their assignments.  Also, I discovered that certain subjects that tend to get overlooked or pushed aside ("we just don't have time this week for that"), like Latin or artist study, were scheduled AND studied.  We'll keep this going and see what happens.

We are wrapping up our study of the middle ages.  Although lapbooking/notebooking and others of that ilk deeply frighten me, each child is putting together a sort of medieval notebook.  We've only begun, but they are having a fun time with this project.  Since we don't do many hands-on projects (they give me hives), it's fun to shake things up a bit.  More on this later, because I'd like to share some of the resources we're using, in case anyone is interested.

We began English for the Thoughtful Child 1 this week.  We're only doing one lesson per week, but so far so good.  I also added in a parts of speech study.  I inherited a lot of books from my mother when she retired as a classroom teacher, such as a series of fun books relating to the parts of speech.  This week, the girls read Kites Fly High: A Book of Verbs.  They also each made a small verbs poster by cutting out verbs from some magazines.  (Hey, another project!  I guess I'm on a roll.)  We've studied nouns, verbs, and pronouns before, but it's good to reinforce.  We own the Schoolhouse Rock videos (multiplication and grammar), and they are not only educational but also a blast from my past.

Memory work is an area I have tended to overlook.  This week, though, the girls each selected a Sara Teasdale poem to memorize.  Also, Miss Priss is working on memorizing the Apostles' Creed for Sunday school recitation, and Tiny Girl is working on Psalm 23.  They have both memorized the Table Blessing in Latin, part of the Latina Christiana curriculum.

I'm finding that Miss Priss is open to reading some more materials on her own.  This is wonderful, since she will be in Ambleside Online Year 4 next year, which is quite a jump up from Year 3.  In fact, I am looking at Year 3.5 for Tiny Girl because I am wondering how she will do with Year 4.  I must say, though, it's so much easier with them in the same year!