Homeschool Week Three

Our third week of the school year wasn't quite as smooth as the first two weeks but I think it was still successful.

Monday went fine. We were on schedule and we did our math work. I've been noticing that Bean's attention span for school is usually about 40 mintes, but Fish will play with those math rods for hours if I'd let him. He begs me to get them down every day but I want them to have the special mystique of only being for Monday Math Days so he only gets to play with them on Monday mornings. I bet he's one of a tiny percentage of the US population that actually looks forward to Mondays.

Tuesday we had a field trip planned, before which I intended to read some more to Bean out of the non-fiction books we checked out on the prairie, but as he had an early morning dentist appointment to have sealants put on his 6-year molars the reading didn't happen. However, the field trip went swimmingly and I think it was very educational. We went to a local nature park that had great walking trails.

We went with my friend Julie and her two younger girls. Our kids all had a great time, especially here at the Turtle Pond where we made them pose for a picture.

Okay, so the posing wasn't their favorite, but they loved the turtle pond.

Tuesday evening I ended up over at Julie's (I'm there a lot!) watching the Olympics until midnight. That totally threw off Wednesday and made me realize just how much it helps my life to get up at 7 am. When I sleep in at all I find myself racing the rest of the day to catch up. No more Olympics until midnight, Birrd! We did eventually get some piano time in Wednesday afternoon, but it wasn't the best quality.

Thursday I needed to can applesauce with Naomi. Canning is a very involved all-day process but she wasn't coming over until 10 so I still managed to do reading with Bean for a few minutes after I got my kitchen all prepped for the canning. Bean read nearly all of a short story from a beginning reading book. I can tell he's still really struggling with reading but he also really wants to learn and he is finally finally FINALLY recognizing some sight words without having to sound them out. It is so rewarding to be right there with him seeing him learn. That's one of the things I love most about homeschool.

Friday we had to do more applesauce so we didn't get around to our craft project until afternoon. With all these apples kicking around the house I had the boys start dried apple faces. We peeled some apples and cut faces into them, adding cloves for eyes and rice for teeth. Now they have to dry for two weeks until they turn into Apple Monsters. As you can imagine the boys are extremely excited.

This coming week I am anxious to get back on my schedule. As I don't have any big projects on the horizon and since the Olympics are almost over I don't think this will be a problem. It just wasn't nearly as much fun trying to do school when our days were all out of whack and I was constantly wondering when I was going to fit it in.

The boys are still excited about school and eager to learn. So even though I'm still trying to figure all this out I'm definitely doing something right.