Week 9

Week 9 passed without any pictures of our school time.  Woops.  It was just a busy week, I guess.  On Monday, our supevising teacher came over to see how we were doing.  She was impressed we were on day 40!  She always has good advice and resources for me so I enjoy her visits.

On Tuesday, we took a half day of school off.  Brian got off work early and we took the kids to see Hotel Transylvania!  It was a good movie--we all loved it.  It was Nathan's 1st movie and it was an almost empty theater so it was perfect.  He did fall asleep for the last part, which is fine because he was free!  :)  

Enjoying the games in the lobby:

Lined up with their pop and popcorn!  The 3 bigger kids sat still for the whole thing--1st time this has happened.  :)

Wednesday, was back to work!  We had a science unit review and it was pretty pathetic.  No one is in love with this science and they still talk about last year's science.  We're sticking it out, though!  Science is a bonus for this age, anyway. 

Thursday, Samuel had an egg hunt for math.  This was the highlight of his week, for sure.  However, I should have had more eggs for Nathan.  Samuel continued to play and hide the eggs for Nathan, me and anyone else available.  It was cute.  We started our new artist study on Thursday.  The kids are so excited to try out Jackson Pollock's style of painting!  I'm hoping it's a warm day when we do that so we can be outside for any splatter.  :)

On Friday, we ended our study of the UK with these really cute drawing sheets for either a beefeater or a Buckingham guard.  We also finished our 2nd read aloud, which was Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.  It seemed like a good week of school!

Changes

We have some changes coming up in our curriculum.  The immediate one is our English.  I like our English just fine, but it's not working for us.  I sent feelers out to see what people use for English when they have a struggling learner.  We are taking the advice to go through First Languages Lessons 1 and 2 in one year and then jump into Shurley English 4 the next year.  I am not committing to next year but I found FLL for $7 and it seems great--very gentle and non-workbook-y.  I think it will be a good change--for both kids.  

I also recently bought Victory Drills and went through a page with both twins, just for my own curiosity.  Lily doesn't need the practice--her score was way above her grade level.  Hunter was definitely challenged and I think this book could be a great supplement to his reading time.  I already have him working on Explode the Code workbooks and reading with me so this is something I'd do maybe once a week.  My homeschool moms meetings are so great for issues like this, though.  They are definitely in the camp of "Why should a child read fluently by 8?" and they offer a lot of great advice to this newbie.  There is still hope that he will learn to ♥ reading!