Weekly Wrap-up

So, my good intentions last week, regarding putting up a Weekly Wrap-up, came to exactly nothing. Though we had a great week. We did really well with school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, spent most of Thursday doing that pesky grocery shopping, and Friday we went with Nana and Grandpa to see Elder Christofferson speak at church. That was a real treat! But I never did get it all written up. This week, I'm doing it by the day, as we go along, so when Friday comes it's nearly finished and I can just push "publish" and be done!



Monday:
We read from The House at Pooh Corner, our current read-aloud. We're getting far enough into this that I'm starting to think about what to do next. I'm thinking about doing either Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or borrowing Farmer Boy from a friend. I'm currently leaning toward Charlie though, just because I won't have to worry about giving it back in a timely fashion! We have some time before I have to make a final decision though.

We also did some patterning with the eManipulatives that Math Expressions has on their website. We have backed way off doing the actual math curriculum, because there's just so much writing in it, and Monkey's not ready for that. But I'm still trying to figure out ways to do some math with him, and he really likes playing with this webpage.

We also read a few verses from the Book of Mormon. We're getting close to the end, but seldom get more than a few verses a day because Monkey want explanations of what's going on. I'm happy to help him understand! But it does mean that our progress is slow.


Tuesday, we had a great trip to a new nature preserve. We saw many more animals than usual, and I was so happy with a number of the pictures I took. This one is my favorite:



Tuesday night we played the penny game, and Monkey was doing very well with blending, even though it was right before bed. He's not very excited about the Bob Books; he says that he'd rather read "regular" books. So we'll keep practicing with the games. He's making progress.

We also had more slow progress through the Book of Mormon. I'm debating if we should turn around and start the Book of Mormon over, or read the four Gospels once we finish. Of course, at the pace we're going, it's going to be quite some time before that decision becomes urgent. Four to six verses in a sitting takes a while to get very far!


Wednesay, Monkey was up in the night puking all over the place. It seems wise to take things easy. I pretty much let him watch his fire-fighter movie all day. Poor little sausage was so miserable!


By Thursday Monkey was doing much better, but I could still see little signs that he wasn't quite himself yet, so we still took things easy. I read some more of The House at Pooh-Corner. We didn't make it all the way through the chapter because Monkey wanted to go back to the "tiddly-pom song." So we went back and re-read several of Pooh's poems. It was charming to hear him mumbling, "Coddleston, Coddelston, Coddelston Pie..." as he went to sleep. I told him that we'd work on remembering it when he wakes up, and he was excited. I am too: this will be our first effort at memorizing poetry! Fortunately, I've just had a conversation on the LDS Mom's Education group about how some other families adapted the memory boxes for use with larger things by putting their poems and things in page protectors and then in a binder. Hopefully Monkey's enjoyment will continue and we can make this a semi-regular thing. I don't know very much poetry, but in addition to several fun ones in the Winnie-the-Pooh books, there are quite a few lovely verses in Pocketful of Pinecones. Robert Louis Stevenson also had some fun ones. Maybe I do know a little poetry. I think I've learned some things since I started this homeschool thing!


Friday we had to do some housework. That was the main thing that we accomplished. But I did sneak in some phonics while we were reading Green Eggs and Ham. Monkey does really well reading one word on a card while we're playing the penny game, but when it's in a book it's suddenly much more difficult. I'm not sure why that is. But to help with it when we read I'll sometimes have him read a single cvc word. This time, we noticed "and" all the many times it's used in the story.


Also, I took a belly picture (Monkey helped) and posted it. I'm really learning a lot about photography from I Heart Faces!