MONDAY: The girls discovered that they did not enjoy completing unfinished work from Thursday and Friday on Sunday, so yesterday found them both to be busy little bees who did all their schoolwork and chores without fuss and had plenty of time leftover to play the day away. At this pace, we should be able to finish our Song School Latin
review next week, and be able to start new material the week after. Good thing, too, because I've been interlibrary loaning Latin curricula to follow! Whee!The only snag in the day was Will's reading assignment. Although she's previously zipped through Journey to the Center of the Earth
, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
, and Around the World in 80 Days
, The Mysterious Island
is a whole other critter--Will made it through thirteen chapters but then admitted defeat, so we've instead turned the book into our evening read-aloud, which is fine, because we'd been needing a new one of those.TUESDAY: The girls are SUPER psyched about their horseback riding lesson later today, and I promised Syd that we could go to the bookstore afterwards, where I will sneakily bring along any pencil-and-paper work that they've yet to finish by then. Syd may not have anything to bring, as she's sitting at the table happily right now, listening to fairy tales off of the ipad and working through her cursive. She most enjoys that type of "packet" work that she can bust through and be done with; she's less enamored of work like her animal biology portfolio, which is project-oriented. Willow, of COURSE, has to be exactly the opposite.
WEDNESDAY: Field trip day! Math and memory work never take a holiday, but hopefully the kiddos DO finish their Tuesday work in a timely manner, because Wednesday is going to be too busy to deal with schoolwork boot camp--I didn't even schedule Will's regular aerial silks class for this Wednesday, because we have plenty do do without it.
THURSDAY: The girls didn't quite finish their history assignment last week, so they're going to finish it this week. I don't *like* to do that, but, as I mentioned, this past Sunday's make-up day was an ultimate fail, so the repeated work is a reminder to me to be more proactive about encouraging the kiddos to stay on top of their schedule. Happily, though, this is DEFINITELY the last week for that Sight Word Caterpillar! I'll be glad to have that extra time to figure out some more creative ways to get Syd through her spelling words without fits; she's about as good at rote memorization as Will, but has zero tolerance for getting an incorrect answer. This makes spelling practice something akin to emotional torture for the poor kid. I must find a way to teach her spelling that doesn't give her panic attacks!
FRIDAY: Another field trip day! It hurt me not to assign geography, a typical Friday work, since that was the other assignment that didn't get finished last week. This 50 states study is slow as molasses! I swear, we are STILL working on the states that we visited this summer, and then I'd like to revisit Indiana, and then I'd like to study the states that we'll be visiting next summer, and then I'd like to study the rest of the states! I'd also like to finish this before the children graduate high school, sigh.
SATURDAY and SUNDAY: The kiddos didn't get a chance to do any of their "fun" school assignments last weekend, but if I can make sure that they stay caught up the rest of this week, then they can explore some new educational games and documentaries as well as go to chess club and Saturday Science class and an interesting-looking family mountain biking event and goof around with toys and swim at the Y and play with friends.
And perhaps an afternoon at the apple orchard, hmmm?
I love how structured your days seem to be. The last few times I have tried the schedule thing, I've just sucked at it.
ReplyDeleteI am giving myself the next two weeks to get my house in order (after moving this weekend), and study enough to pass my two finals next week (so excited to be done with statistics and business law!), then I think we will get some structure going for both the kiddo and myself.
I like the idea of her and I sitting down to work on school work together, I just need to make sure whatever she is working on, she can do mostly on her own.
Question, do you let the girls listen to music/audio books while doing their school work?
I let them listen to audiobooks when they're doing something kind of mindless, like their cursive or copying a composition. To Syd's great grief, I won't let her listen to anything that has a plot when she's working on any other subjects, because I don't think she'll have her whole mind on that subject, then.
ReplyDeleteWe'll sometimes listen to music, though, while we're doing other subjects. I really like using Spotify as a ready reference tool, so this summer we'd listen to Civil War-era songs while the girls worked on their Civil War projects, and I'd try to find songs that mentioned the state we were studying while they did their geography, etc. There's this one musician, Victor Johnson, who has an AMAZING CD of multiplication songs, and I feel like I stream those all the time, because the girls *still* haven't memorized their multiplication tables, sigh.
In the past, I've been the same way with Emma and her audio books. Thinking of letting her try more complicated stuff, just to see if she'll complain less.
ReplyDeleteMultiplication tables are on our to learn this year list.