Weekly Wrap-Up: Surviving a Freak Out

We've been doing quite a bit around here. Both our outside activities and academic pursuits have kept us so busy that I've not been posting very much, a state I hope to remedy soon. How I'll do that I'm not sure, but I'll worry about the details later.

All our activities have swung back into action: piano lessons, our church's Wednesday night children's program, tumbling, riding lessons and practice rides, Scouts, Timothy Ministry (homeschool enrichment classes), and Jasper's new group obedience class. In Timothy, Miss Priss is again taking Irish dance and an acrylic painting class. Tiny Girl is taking a chess class and the same painting class as her sister. In Jasper's first class, he was the star; in the second class, not quite as stellar. Oh well!

In history this week, we studied Peter the Great. Diane Stanley's biography, Peter the Great, is as wonderful a resource as her other biographies that we've read. The heart and circulatory system has been our science focus for two weeks. Here is a blog post about our studies in that fascinating arena, including book suggestions and websites. And in art, we've been learning about Rembrandt. I found Mike Venezia's excellent Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists: Rembrandt DVD at the library (also available in paperback), which we all greatly enjoyed. I also checked out a few others, such as What Makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt, by Richard Muhlberger, which provides more information than the girls need at this point, but is still useful in our studies.

In grammar, we've continued our detailed study of verbs with the free Scott Foresman Online Grammar and Writing Handbook. We also added writing as a subject, using Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Ease, Level 4. Tiny Girl began at the beginning of the book, while I started Miss Priss about mid-way through. It's a challenging curriculum, so we're starting slowly. In literature, Miss Priss is reading Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and The Princess and Curdie, by George Macdonald; Tiny Girl is laughing her way through The Peterkin Papers, by Lucretia Hale.

And now for the freak out: after two weeks of comparing with ps and then freaking out (on my part) about Miss Priss's math and making us both miserable, I finally came to my senses and put her back into her Mathematical Reasoning book from The Critical Thinking Company. She has since regained what confidence I'd shaken in her when I pushed her to do more than she is developmentally ready to do. We both feel like a huge load has been lifted from our shoulders, thank the Lord! My friend, Silvia, wrote an excellent post about this sort of destructive comparison on her blog, and it really helped me to read her words.

Bible and prayer time, copywork, logic, spelling, piano practice, French, and the girls' individual project work continued, as well. More on the projects when they're complete. Miss Priss is working on a report on Theodore Roosevelt, and Tiny Girl has been exploring the oceans.

That's our week! To read more fun and fab wrap-ups, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.