January is hard. All the excitement of the holidays is past, our 2 week vacation from schoolwork is a distant memory now and it is cold, cold, below- zero -all -day- and- night cold. I have a friend who is right now in possession of a public school registration form and is threatening to use it. She means it, too. Everyone I talk to is tired of all the materials they were so fond of a couple months ago. January is hard. We can't really seem to get into the swing of things right now, but we're hangin in there.
Here is a rundown our home edumacatin' week, January 12-16
Monday-Fight, fight fight. Ben and I fight all morning long over everything. He is being incredibly stubborn about any and all assignments and shooting me laser eyes any chance he gets. Ben's journal entry was on what a curse cursive writing is. It was hilarious, but he meant it o offend so when I laughed, he gave me laser eyes again. Someone please remind me why I am doing this? His handwriting for this journal entry, by the way, was beautiful! The afternoon was a bit calmer as we spent it playing scrabble. I won. Haha.
Tuesday-Ben started the day by spending three hours making an ipod projector. He got it to work once, but is having troubles with it and is going to continue with it again tomorrow. No fighting or laser eyes today. Both boys completed their math in record time and without any mistakes. Handwriting, too. In history we have been reading about immigrants to the US and are enjoying Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman. Looking forward to a study of our family and when they first came to America. We have started Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome as an afternoon read-aloud. Will is really interested so far and is highly intrigued by "the island" the children are going to sail to. The boys asked to play Scrabble again in the late afternoon. I won again, with Ben coming in a close second. Charlie played a Blues Clues ABC game on the computer.
Wednesday-The boys started the day making rubber band pistols with K'Nex. When I could drag them away from that they worked on math and handwriting. Both boys made entries in their History Portfolios on immigrant families. After lunch we read more from Swallows and Amazons. I also had the kids fill out an "About Me" worksheet to start our genealogy research on our family. I'm using Climbing Your Family Tree by Ira Wolfman as a guide for what we'll do. You can print out worksheets to go with the book online. I did a ton of genealogical research in college and so I plan to bring all that out at some point, but I want the boys to do some detective work of their own, too.
Thursday- It was 25 degrees below zero this morning when I went out to feed the chickens. Looks like it's too cold for school!! Day off! Woohoo! Aside from going to piano lessons, we stayed at home keeping warm and reading. Ben's electronics project today was a fake hard drive. It has a memory stick inside and so can be used for saving files. It's sort of a joke I guess..an over-kill way of dressing up a USB stick. I don't know. Go ask your 10 year-old!
Friday-Too cold by far today to go anywhere or play outside. It was 25 degrees below again this morning when I checked at 9:00 am. Brrr.Of course with the cold we are obligated to do the boiling water experiment and frolic through the resulting vapor. Thanks to Ben for putting the movie together.
After throwing pan after pan of boiling water into the air, we managed a pretty normal academic day. We did the 3 R's and we finally got around to starting lesson 2 in Lively Latin. The boys and I are still enjoying this! We also accomplished some more reading from Swallows and Amazons and our genealogy book. I had the boys work on a pedigree chart today and we looked at my collection of old family photos. The photo below is of my maternal great-grandparents marriage in Czechoslovakia. I love this photo and feel so lucky to have it!
That's all for this week! Not too bad I guess, for feeling so lazy! Thanks for stopping by to check out The Week in Review!
8 comments:
It looks like you had a full week also. I don't have a fighter but a whiner. You wanna trade? LOL We are enjoying MFW ECC. My sons begged me not to change curriculum in the upcoming year so we will be using Creation to Greeks next.
That water video is pretty neat! We won't EVER get the chance to try that where we live!
Hope your February is better???
I love old pictures! I love genealogy but haven't introduced the process to the kiddos just yet.
I like how you organized your week by day - I'll have to give that a try.
Thanks for stopping by! I'm adding you to my blogroll. :)
Hey! I think that's the family photo where one of the relatives has a werewolf paw/claw! Steve pointed it out to me years ago!
I am seriously rofl! Your Monday is cracking me up! Especially the part about you winning the game! Oh the things that make a mother happy!
And...I am right there with you as far as Januaries go. We are having a tough time too and I am hoping next week will be different.
Hang in there and stay warm! :o)
loved the water video. It's been stinking cold here, too, so we might just try it! The old photo is wonderful! So glad you won at scrabble = )!!
What a good memory you have, Anonymous! Yes, it is the man on the left side of the photo. His hand looks quite elongated. Either he moved it when the photo was being taken, or it is the curse of the monkey-paw!
You and the Missus should make the trek up here soon to see it in person. I'll have my people contact yours.
Wow! Your first paragraph made me laugh at how true it is that we all feel so blah in January, and your video was fantastic! We heard about people doing that just north of us but it's not quite cold enough here...lowest was -8 overnight. Balmy. :)
Thanks for visiting!
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