Weekly wrap-up January 6, 2012

I haven't blogged much since last spring. Honestly? I was burned out. See, somewhere in my head, I had this idea that this blog had to be "perfect." This blog needed to "attract readers." I wanted to have freebies to give away of worksheets or units or whatever that we had done. But it never became that. And I got discouraged and decided to just not blog.

That was an OK plan, except that I miss being able to go back and see what we have done! I like my weekly updates, if for no other reason than they give me a record of what we have done.

I am giving it a go again, but this time with less expectations. I am only committing to once a week blogging, my weekly summary. If other things pop up, so be it. But I am not going to aim for more than once a week. And I won't guarantee pictures. I take oodles of photos, but often my kids are in them. I don't want to have to worry about whether or not I got a shot without my kids. It takes energy away from where I need to be focused right now, and that is on educating my kids.

With that, here is our week in review!

We had a quiet week, a great way to start the new year.

We are still working through Story of the World Vol. 2. We read Chapter 16--England After the Conquest where we learned about the English Language, Castles, and Feudalism. We also read Chapter 17--Knights and Samurai on, well, Knights and Samurai. We read two chapters this week to try to get caught up to where I planned for us to be by now. We might be there, I can't really tell. Either way, we are still enjoying Story of the world.

We started learning about the solar system in R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey--Earth and Space. We drew our own solar systems (Kutey's was quite creative!) and read about the sun. We have also all been singing Why does the Sun Shine by They Might Be Giants. I know, I know, not the most accurate song, but it is more catchy that the more correct one! We were supposed to make a solar oven, but it is January in Minnesota. We should have tried today, when temps were in the upper 40's (Not normal in January in Minnesota, in case you wondered!), but it wasn't looking like the sun would cooperate, so I didn't start the project. Turns out it was sunny, though I am still not sure we could cook a hot dog in a small solar oven at this time of year.

Kiddo wrote 2 reports this week, one on sharks the other on tropical fish. This was something he wanted to do. He came up with the topics himself, found the books, and wrote the reports. His construction was pretty good, but we need to work on spelling and penmanship!

Kiddo continues to work through the times tables in Singapore Math 3A. He'll be on schedule to move into 3B in February. He needs to work on memorizing the tables, but at least the concepts of multiplication and division are fairly well understood.

I ramped up school with Kutey a bit. I had become a bit lazy with her. She is resistant to doing most things ("I don't like to..." was heard daily!), but she is almost 6 and I am feeling the need to get her a bit more on track. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was not working well for us, she was having trouble focusing long enough to get through a lesson because they were boring, so I gave up for a while. For the last month or so I have had her read Bob Books. She likes those more, though she still complains. I can tell her reading is improving, though, so I have stuck with it. We are currently reading Level B, Set 1, Kids! (Set 3 in the new numbering) We are just over halfway through our first reading. I'll have her read them at least once more before we move on.

I also printed off the Preschool pack and Kindergarten add-on for Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree from Homeschool Creations. I love Jolanthe's collections. I will have to supplement for Kutey, since she is really halfway through kindergarten already, but she enjoys the activities (as much as she enjoys anything!) I used the stocking counting activity to cover skip counting by 2's. We also covered odd and even numbers with the ornament addition page and the stockings. Kutey grasped both concepts quickly. She counted by two's in her head the very first time we covered it! When I asked her, she said she just told herself to skip the number in between. Guess no formal math teaching this year hasn't hurt her! We are going to have to cover larger numbers in the coming weeks, she is more than ready.

We ventured out for our Tuesday group where the kids put on a performance of Cinderella for the moms. We also ventured out on Friday to run errands, buy birthday presents for Daddy (though I am not sure who the presents are really for...), and get some books for Kiddo's next reports (he is really enjoying them!).

And that brings us to the end of the week!

How was your week?

We are linking up to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Click to see what others did this week!