Week in Review Nov. 15-19

It's been a very productive week. Which is good... we needed it. The first trimester sleep-gag-nap-gag routine is over and I'm feeling much better. Feeling much better = Fun School with lots accomplished.

Math BamBam has spent the week reviewing his addition facts. I felt he needed to get them a bit more cemented in his mind before we moved on to subtraction. The Primpress is working in her BJU Kindergarten math, but I ordered Math-U-See's Primer for her. I had decided to try out BJU this year because it had prettier graphics and looked more entertaining (I know, I know). But after 9 weeks of BJU with BamBam, I could tell it was nowhere near as rigorous as MUS. I quickly switched BamBam back to MUS and am looking forward to starting Primpress is in the same series. I have learned my lesson: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.



Memory Work A bit more spotty than in the past, but the children love it and beg for it everyday. We've finished memorizing "There was an Old Person whose habits" by Edward Lear and Mark 12:30-31. I should probably start a list of the memory work they've completed somewhere here on the blog.

Language Arts BamBam flew through the book Wagon Wheels by Brenner. It's too easy to be instructional reading for him now, but I'm sticking with the Sonlight reading program because it's quite a jump to the next book. He'll be moving into the Grade 2 Intermediate readers. He's still plugging away in Writing With Ease 1 and First Language Lessons.

The Primpress started working on long vowels this week. She has taken to it like a duck to water. I have a feeling she'll be taking after her big brothers when it comes to their love of reading. I caught her and BamBam reading a giant book of Garfield cartoons this morning.

Science This is Daddy Jayhawk's domain. They are working on all things astronomy-related. My contribution included an impromptu lesson on spiders this morning. BamBam covered his fingers in clothespins and pretended it was a giant spider. He (lovingly) terrorized his little siblings with the faux spider. Primpress brought up the fact that real spiders have eight legs, not five. And so our mini-lesson on spider legs was born.



History has been put on hold. The plan is to start a formal history cycle next year.

Next week Thanksgiving lapbooks! The regular school books will be put away. We will create lapbooks to assist in learning the history of Thanksgiving.

The oldest boy, Punk, has been feeling left out since I have not mentioned him on the blog, yet. So allow me to brag on him for a moment. In his first standardized test in the public school system he scored in the 75% in math and 85% in reading. 75% in math?!??! If you could have seen the blood, sweat and tears that we both put into math over the past seven years, you'd know that this score is huge for him. I think his venture into public school has taught him that he is smarter than he believed but also that he is way more disorganized than he thought.