our first 10 weeks

In January, I outlined our schedule target for the year. We've finished 10 weeks and this week has been declared Spring Break. The kids didn't need the break nearly as much as I did - the house is a wreck and I need to CLEAN. The mess is bugging me to no end. A friend even came over today and kept the baby out of my way while I scrubbed both bathrooms top to bottom.

So. School report.

Surprisingly (for us), we're pretty consistent with our opening of a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance and a scripture. Hooray! At first, Posy would have nothing to do with the Pledge for whatever reason. She still ignores me when I say it's time to start school and we have a prayer, usually said by Magnolia. But as soon as we start the Pledge, Posy comes running. They like to stand on their chairs for it and I don't care. They're on their feet. That's what matters. For the scriptures, we've been memorizing the Articles of Faith and we're up to #9.

Immediately after finishing our opening, I pass out the handwriting practice sheets which have both capital and lower case letters. Birdie and Magnolia - who are almost 4 and 2 - are doing great with these! Birdie can write her name now, and Magnolia can also squiggle out some of the letters. They're doing great with tracing the models on their papers. We went through the entire alphabet (backwards), and have started on the numbers. Additionally, Sunny has finished Units 1 and 2 of the Scott Forsman grammar, and Posy has just a few pages left of Unit 2. They both completed 9 spelling lists.

And then I typically lose their interest for the rest of the day ... but we get some reading in somewhere. I'm trying to do the 1000 Book Challenge with Birdie and Magnolia, but they insist on a lot of repeats of stories. So we're reading a lot, but not making much progress to getting to 1000 books. We're between 50 and 60, I think. Sunny and Posy read on their own constantly, so I'm not really keeping track of that.

I get them to do math on the computer at some point. Posy has just a couple of sections left to finish the kindergarten level, and then she's into 1st grade. Sunny is still plodding along and avoiding it and not finishing anything. One of these days?

We read a little bit of Story of the World for history, but it's not really holding our interest. Mine, as well as Sunny and Posy's. The concept is good - read a chapter, supplement with extra books from the library, and do activities. But ... meh ... not doing it for us. Maybe we need to skip up to a different time period rather than the Ancient Egyptians? I don't know. I'm not really pushing it on this one, because so many other things they read fit the History category.

We did a couple of things for our gardening theme for science, but we're just now - this week - able to really get going on this. We tried planting some bean seeds in jars with wet paper towels to see the roots sprout but that bombed. We've done a couple of random activities here and there, but we haven't been able to really play in the dirt until just a couple of days ago. AC bought a bunch of potting soil and compost, and we made soil blocks for our seed starts for our garden. Posy loved playing in the mud that they made. So this is kicking into high gear pretty quick here (although we are still waiting for the last of the snow to melt).

And art. Sigh. Again - a really great idea but not something I do well with putting into practice. I need to find a better way to do this. Sunny wants to do sewing for her art section, which I'm great with. She also wants me to start a sewing group for her - she's mad that I have a couple of monthly sewing groups I attend in the evenings (knitting and quilting) and I won't take her with me. She's also beginning to show interest in the piano again.

For our extras - Project Nellie Bly is coming along! This needs its own post because some of the things we've learned about Japan and England were pretty cool (and involved spending hours on Google looking up hats. So. Fun.) We have some kid-level biographies about Nellie Bly from the library, and found a 45-minute move on the Biography Channel online about Jules Verne. We're reading Around the World in 80 Days out loud. We're kind of all over the place with it, and I have to remind myself this is Sunny's project, so I don't totally take it over - not because I'm doing it for her, but because I'm having fun with it too!

We started a co-op on Tuesdays in Columbia, replacing our trips to Middletown from last fall. This one is smaller. I'm not sure why, but this one just feels better to me. Sunny has 3 classes - outdoor PE games (lots of running), drama (they're putting together a play), and American Girl Caroline (reading the books and doing crafts). This co-op starts at age 7 because it's set up as a 4H club, so the other girls are just hanging out. Fortunately, the library is literally just across the parking lot, so we spend a good amount of the day there. And there's a nursery room with lots of toys, so they're not bored when we're not at the library. Good times. This is where I'm teaching my gardening class. Next week, we start a 2nd co-op in Manchester held at the Lutz children's museum on Mondays.

And in conclusion - I declare our first 10 weeks to be a success! We got to 45 days completed, due to losing a few for sick days. The last couple of weeks, it was a struggle to get through anything because we were all in the throes of cabin fever, waiting for winter to end and the snow to melt. Hopefully we can get a bit of a recharge here, and jump back into things next week. I'm looking at the actual work that we did - what was going well and what wasn't, to see where we can make some tweaks. Onward!