Weekly Review 4/4-4/8

We've been really busy this week, but I have no pictures to show for our efforts.  The week began with taking Baby A about 80 miles away to see a Pediatric Rheumatologist for the first time. She had to get more blood drawn and more xrays. It was really rough...for her and for me. I can't stand watching my child be in pain. It was scary also because the ped rheumy mentioned testing her for leukemia. Um, yeah...talk about freaking out. When she started talking about Oncology referrals I zoned out. I went into a deep praying mode that I had never experienced before. I heard the Dr, and was giving her eye contact, but my spirit was calling out the only one who could help me stay strong and focused. I don't know how people who don't walk with the Lord do it. I would have seriously had a break down...mentally and physically just at the thought of it....but here, some Dr was telling me she seen certain signs that cause her to want to do the testing. God help her. God help me. God help me, help her was all I could think of. I still think of that on a daily basis, because even though her pediatrician has since then told me that she doesnt see anything in her testing indicative of Leukemia, the fact is that the child is still in pain.  I will say though, that she is doing much better now than she was 2 weeks ago. She is also expressing herself  verbally ALOT! I am amazed at the amount of words she is learning...on an almost daily basis. I can't help but think it was a neccesary skill for her to learn to be able communicate with me the things that she is going through. Whatever it is, she is speaking alot more this last week or two, and is making herself KNOWN!  Here's a video I took of her last week, just random one night before bathtime :) Just a little note before you watch: She says "night night" to nurse, so at the end she starts trying to get that camera out of the way so she can go "night night" :D

As for the other children here, they got alot of school work done, at least alot of the 3r's done. Middle A has really been enjoying school and asking to do her ETC workbook and Horizons Math. We have been doing other random things that I will keep better track of next week with more pictures, hopefully :)

Big A has been moving right along in Saxon Math and R&S English. He did several lessons and is retaining so much this year with R&S. I am also loving our interest led approach with science this last few months. We had to put the abeka down and just go with the flow, but with a science loving child I didn't have to worry about him finding an interest and learning more about it. He has always been into learning more about the weather, and thankfully we have had our fair share of odd weather here lately!

Little A has been tagging along with his sister when he feels like it. He really loves watching the Leap Frog DVD's but just recently I found quite a few of them on Netflix instant watch. Sooo awesome for those days that I need him to stay busy! He is picking up things very naturally...knows his shapes, colors, numbers and letters just from daily living, which is awesome. I am amazed at the variety of learning styles we have going on here in our homeschool. It makes this Mama crazy sometimes, but is building some patience in me like never before! :)

Have a great weekend!

Weekly Review 1/31- 2/4

                                    
 This week has been another one of those busy weeks (as we have come to expect around here lately) but managed to get some school in and are happily starting some spring cleaning to make room for some new editions to our family....but more on THAT later! (No, #5 isnt on the way ;p)

I'm still trying to get the hang of posting a review for TWO children who are officially schooling now, so bare with me if this post (and all that have come before this one lol) are a bit scatterbrained. I havent been spending alot of time keeping track of the things the kids do in my brain or in pictures, unfortunately, but do have my list "on paper". Lists arent as fun as picture though, so I will try to just post some random pics that I have wanted to share, but havent as of late.

   Middle A

• Completed 3 lessons of Horizons Math K ...Happily I might add ;) We are loving this math!
• Completed a few more pages in her Explode the Code Primer. She is moving fairly quickly in these and I am gladly letting her go at her own pace :)
• Completed two more lessons in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons. This is going very nicely, but I have yet to figure out how its going to work! LOL 
• Is not really into our read aloud "Winnie the Pooh" *GASP* So we are gonna move along and come back to that later ;) Thinking of starting this series of books or starting some sort of thematic unit on insects....that is her "thing" right now ;) We are going to start a butterfly garden soon, but until then our new editions will keep us busy ;)

Big A

• Is doing EXCELLENT with R&S English!  I am sooo happy we decided to return to it. He completed several lessons effortlessly, which reminds me..I need to post how we are using it. Look for that in the next day or so.
• Completed 4 lessons in Saxon Math and got an A on his test. Great job Big A! 
• Completed 3 writing assignments in Wordsmith Apprentice that included filling out a job application and listing a whole bunch of his favorite things :) Such a fun way to teach writing and get his brain working creatively.
• Completed several pages in his ACE Word Building Workbook....
• Completed one lesson in "Choosing Obedience" (using this as a sort of devotional with all the kids in the morning....he's not too big ;)   and read 5 chapters in Matthew during his personal bible time.....

We are really hoping to get back to MOH and Science next week.....but there has been lots of nature study going on in the form of free play in our back yard and History lessons via Drive Thru History ;)

                                         ....gotta work on those motor skills!..........................

  This has been a pretty light week here as I have been busy with taking care of appts for my Grandma, setting up school things for my hubby who is taking some college courses soon, and of course, just taking care of "home" which is a full time job in itself :) I am blessed to be able to do all that I have been called to do and love every minute of this life that God has been gracious enough to give to me.

Blessings, my friends.......

Weekly Review- 10/25- 10/29 (NO pics edition)

This has been a long week for my family. Things have felt as if they were standing still, but yet moving faster than I can keep up. Life is changing as I know it, and I am just thankful for God's grace as we go through it. With that said, we DID get some school accomplished....and learned some real life lessons through the week as well.

Big A:

~ is on schedule and finished a PACE in the subjects of Math, English, and Word Building.

~Started reading Ten Boys Who didnt Give In.  and likes it so far.

~Read another 10 books on CARS and how they are made, manufactured, etc. Drew another 10 cars in his spare time. lol (included history and science....yeah!)

then life happens and...

~Spent the day listening to mom explain what Cancer is while she was looking it up online...

~played at the park with his friends and enjoyed every bit of the beautiful day it turned out to be!

~caught the sickies his siblings had and had to stay quarantined so he didnt reinfect everyone..giggle.

Middle A:

~did 3 lessons in Frontline Phonics and copied each letter she learned very carefully.  Has started BLENDING and I am sooo excited for her!

~Did a couple of pages of Math in her ACE Pace.

~ Enjoyed the new enrichment curriculum we started this week for both her and Little A (a little late in the game for fall, but will pick and choose what we use till Thanksgiving break) You can find it here and I will be blogging more about it in the next post....



Camera was just not around me this week hardly at all, but I did get a few shots of some of the things I did with Middle A. They'll be in the next post.....

Now I sit and plan the next week, and even though life will still happen and those plans are almost always change, I still enjoy the planning and will continue to do it.......

Weekly Review 10/11-10-15

I finally have a computer I can blog from! My old desktop has killed two hard drives in the last couple of months, so we decided it needed to be replaced after 6 years of serving us well :) We bought another Gateway (haha to which the first one sent to us was DOA or for those who arent familiar with that term= Dead on Arrival LOL!) and are very happy with it.

So even though I have not been blogging about our school...life still goes on and yes, we have been doing school ;) Of course, I dont post all that we do much either, so most won't notice much of a difference HA!
I dont have a ton of pictures of this weeks events, so I will just be blogging some random things until next Friday. I do plan on doing a post that shows what a typical day (or not so typical day!LOL) in our school looks like, as well as more pics of the childrens artwork and things that they do, but I never seem to remember to take pics of.

Here is a random pic I DID take this week. She is getting sooo big! (and yes, a pumpkin stem makes a nice teether...lol)

Weekly Review 9/20-9/24

This week, Big A.......

~ Has been doing extremely well in his math.....

~ got a 96% on his first Word Building test....

~Learned that its not easy to remember all the definitions for the parts of speech and will be writing them down on note cards starting next week to help him remember...

~Heard about what happened at Masada with the Jews, read about the Dead Sea Scrolls and was intrigued that someone could float with out trying because of the salt, and loved reading about Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.  Here's a pic of his notebook page for the week containing a timeline of those three events as well as summaries of the things he found interesting in our readings this week:(thanks to Daisy for the pre-made notebooking page!)

~Started reading in Science about the Creation of the World in one of our science texts, Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space. This was as far as we got this week. next week he will be reading out of his A Beka text as well.

~He also has taken up the hobby of drawing different types of cars and wanted me to show it as part of his school week since he says "It IS art, Mom!"

Middle A this week...

~finished up learning the Short A sound and loved hearing the stories about "Abbie the Antelope" in our ACE Kindergarten Program. She is learning the art of sitting still for more than 5 mins through a story, as well as coloring with a purpose, not just being creative *tongue in cheek*.

~Learned about the Story of Noah's Ark and why he built it.

~Has drawn many, many pictures of things around the house, people around the house , and things she has seen outside. She has a ton of notebooks that she has claimed for this purpose and is making mama a little frazzled with her mess creativeness (since mama has none).

_

~She also has created her own sense of style....um, something a 5 yr old should not be allowed to do:

Little and Baby A...... 

have been just hanging around under desks, drawing on them (and sometimes on paper), and occasionally playing with the toys I have out for them that look like hot dogs ;)

Together we...........

~Started reading through the book of Matthew, started listening and memorizing the hymn "Trust and Obey" and listened to it in different styles of music on you tube. They all memorized Ephesians 6:1 as well as listened to different character stories on obedience. I decided to put together our own Bible curriculum together this year using all the different resources I have available. We are just going at our own pace at what I have planned, but so far its nice to have that be the main focus of our studies in the morning and starts our day off great!

~watched Mommy and her friend make soap again and discovered the smell of lemongrass at the health food store upon shopping for oils for the soap. They insisted on using that smell good soap right away, but had a lesson in how caustic that soap is and how we will learn to practice patience while waiting for it. In 4 weeks we'll have an assembly line of baths going on, i think ;)

~Had our first fellowship park day of the year and enjoyed seeing lots of our friends again!

~Started going to AWANA Club for the first time and learned that its gonna be a late night, so we need to go back to "Light Fridays" (wink)...


Hope you all had a great week as well, ours will be an interesting one with lots of busyness, but I am armed with schedule and lesson plans in hand!

See ya ;)

Weekly Review 9/13-9/17

This is gonna be mostly just a check in type of post since I didnt any pictures this week. We have had the sickies hanging around here so not much school has gotten done with the Littles.

Big A this week:

~Mastered mixed numbers and long division. Got an A on his Math PACE test!

~Is finally starting to retain what he is learning about the 8 parts of speech. He even knows what words like Commodious and Pate are and what they mean. ( was needing to find their synonyms)

~Is learning that there is no easy way to by pass looking up words in the dictionary....(not letting him use the computer for it yet)

~Read 3 lessons in Mystery Of History Vol 2 about Paul, Christian Martyrs, and Josephus, did his first notebooking page of the year without complaining (this was last weeks that he finished this week ;)  and said that he really likes having a family history time. (we are reading aloud the book...sometimes at night, sometimes during the day, but all are joining in)




Next week we will be adding in Bible/Character Study and Science. I will also try and make a point to really be mindful about taking pics.  Once we get school started things are nonstop and I just forget to take them. I might just assign Big A as picture taker and that will take care of that :)

Middle A was sick most of this week so school for her was very light. We did some of her PACE work at the beginning of the week, but the rest of it was spent drawing, writing her letters, reading aloud Winnie the Pooh and listening to her brothers history lessons.  We are using these dry erase pockets for her PACE work, so that I can save money for the littles who will be in K in the next couple of years. Thanks to Daisy for posting about these on her blog! The only issue I am coming across in using them is that I didnt get enough colors for the dry erase markers LOL!

Have a great weekend!