Our Workable Week

Honestly, I thought that this week (after looking at the forecast last week) would be soooo much warmer than it has been. And, in all honesty, it has been a bit warmer ... At least there was no blizzard this week. But we had rain on the last day of winter (Wednesday) and an ice warning for overnight the first day of spring (Thursday). Michigan weather, go figure!

The girls working on a picture for Mommy

This week was pretty productive although it didn't seem to be at first glance before I began mapping out what to write for this post. You see, if we don't check 50 million little boxes in my plans every week I don't think at first that we've done so very much. Then when I look back I realize that we've done a ton of work I hadn't thought we'd done. We're still doing lessons today (Friday) so a few more boxes will probably be checked off but it's not so that I don't worry that they're learning because it's so obvious that they are!

Attempting to make sense out of a language arts assignment

So, instead of going day by day this week I'm going to cover what we've done in each subject instead. In the spots where it's necessary I'll put the grade like this (grade).

Her reaction to being told she would be attending
a "catechism function" for kids her age Tuesday...

Bible: We did a unit study on Saint Patrick, morning devotionals with daily readings from several different books in the Bible (3+ passages a day), catechism classes at our local parish, and daily rosary. 

Language Arts: (PreK/K) Letter V work, writing our name, phonics work on both Starfall.com and in our phonics books, and several stories read. (3) Cursive H work, spelling all week long, text book work for proper word usage all week long, stories with little sister, helping little sister with phonics (so she can review as well), and independent reading. (6) Creative writing using A Beka creative writing text, text book work using A Beka text, independent reading, lots of dictionary use (independent to look up words in his reading he did not know), and reading to his little sisters a few times to work on his oral presentation and fluidness.

Supervising language arts lessons as per usual...

Arithmetic: (PreK/K) Review of shapes and colors, review of numbers 0-15, concepts of more and less, pattern work, and basic addition: 3+3=6. (3) Work with fractions and adding and subtracting numerators, as well as review of all previous skills learned. (6) Work with compass and protractor, learning angle measurement, radius and circumference, and review of all previous skills learned.

Trixie cat helping out with lessons again.

Health: Both Cracker Jack's finished chapter seven of their health books (different books but both texts from their grades through A Beka) and began chapter eight. Peanut gets simple talks about personal hygiene and why we can't eat certain foods all day long as the questions/needs come up. She also joined in with an experiment from YCJ's health book to show how mucus works (gotta love it when science and health mix like that).
Science: (6) Module 8 in Apologia General Science and enjoying it quite well. (PreK/K and 3) Working through our plant nutrient materials and learning a lot, enjoying the easy flow of the materials and glad that the knowledge will transfer to our veggie garden later this year.





History: Medieval History, in particular medieval England and how people lived during that time. ECJ (6) has been doing some independent looking at this subject as well. We will go ahead and revisit this time frame this summer at our leisure right now we're headed "forward" in time to colonial America next week, we were only supposed to detour for a week into medieval times.

Moragon substituting...

Art: All of the children have been enjoying their new learn to draw books, as well as a bunch of various crafts through the week, and all of our crafting we did on Sunday.
Music: The Cracker Jacks have been working slowly with their new instruments (recorder and guitar) still. Peanut has some empty coffee cans and non sharpened pencils she's using as drums right now (I suppose I'll have to break down and buy her a "real" drum set sometime in the future as she hasn't let this go *sigh*). We've been looking into country music (our favorite genre) more in the past week and have some dedicated listening time each day now.
Shop: ECJ is the only one (other than Mommy and Daddy) who had any shop work this week, he took several safety lessons about table saws and screw guns from Daddy and did some work on his new room alongside of us this week.

Shadow stepping in as a teacher's aide...

Home economics: Sunday all three children "cooked" a meal. Every weekday this week one of the Cracker Jack's has made breakfast and/or lunch. ECJ learned more about doing his own laundry and has almost* become proficient at it now. All the children have been learning to clean up after themselves better this week.
Computers: Each of the campers works on various websites throughout the week in different areas of their lessons. They've all made leaps and bounds with basic computer skills this year.

Wow! *Pantpant* I think perhaps I worry too much about those boxes! It seems like we've done quite a bit more than I had thought we'd done! Perhaps I need to reevaluate how much needs to be done at some point in the future. The only subjects that aren't lead daily are art, music, and shop. Art seems to just happen around here though we do make a concentrated effort at it at least once a week, several of us have artistic hobbies that we work on each day. Music is a constant in our home as well, next year we will be purchasing Squilt to take a deeper look into some of the genres/time frames I myself don't remember much about. As for shop, most of you know that we bought this home knowing that it needed a TON of work (last year), shop only happens when we have a project going on. Sometimes the girls are also involved in "shop class" but when the big table saw comes out they are excluded due to their age and safety concerns.  

My endeavors for the 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge are going quite well. We've taken out several bags of trash, gotten together a lot of donation bags, and generally gotten more organized around here. It's also not just my challenge anymore as Daddy and the campers are joining in to help me out! In our organizing endeavors we've decided to finally swap the Cracker Jack's rooms (which they want to do) and finish both of them off (our current shop lessons). 

Squeeks supervising breakfast Sunday morning.

As for our hours with the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge we are way behind our midyear goal of 500 hours due to weather having been so horrid this past winter (yay, winter's past LOL). We might be able to get some more hours in today (Friday) and tomorrow so I'm not going to post exact numbers just yet but am looking to do so on Saturday evening on our Facebook page . There's just not enough hours this week for a post unfortunately.

Linking up this week with:
Homegrown Learners
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9 
and 
Great Peace Academy

Posts you may have missed this week include:
OH! It Feels Like Spring!
Kids and Saint Pat's Menu
Happy Saint Patrick's Day
10 Reasons I'm Ready for Spring
Winter is Over! (Bucket List Update)
Project Days (Day in the life)

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