{Week 6}

Hiya!

I've lived to tell about another week of homeschooling!

I'm really excited about all the stuff my kids are learning through Classical Conversations.  It sure can be an overwhelming program, but your kids learn a LOT.  And the parent does too!  One of the things we're currently learning is a timeline of the history of the world.  Sound like a lot of information to memorize?  Well it is!  But we're learning it in chunks, week by week.  And we learn the information set to a song, so it makes it easier to memorize.

Each week in CC, the kids do some kind of fine art.  For the current 6 weeks set, the fine art is drawing.  The kids all learned about perspective this week at CC.  Here is Claire's drawing (you're looking down a street with buildings on the right and trees on the left)

Here is a snapshot of my personal dry erase board during Essentials at CC this week.  We were identifying all the parts of speech and then diagramming the sentence "Do any of the kids laugh loudly?" 

The final shot of CC this week is of Claire's Foundations class reviewing their memory work.  The class decided to go outside for their review since the weather was so nice.

Tuesday got off to a sluggish start. I had spent the previous night upchucking my dinner and then some.  So Tuesday morning I wasn't exactly bright eyed and bushy-tailed.  BUT.  I put on my big girl panties and we got to work anyway.  Attitudes were pretty good that day.

Cade, our resident artist, decided to draw this picture on our white board during one of his breaks.  The drawing uses the perspective concept that he learned in CC on Monday.  The drawing is his viewpoint from his desk (the three rectangles at the top are the windows in our living room upstairs).

Wednesday we got started on time (hallelujah!)  And it went pretty well except for battling some serious attitude issues.  Scott's solution was to put the offending kid in "solitary confinement" in the guest room for the entire day with nothing but books (obviously the kid could come out for meals and to go to the bathroom).  And so it happened.  One kiddo got solitary after repeated warnings.  And it wasn't pretty.  There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  But OH!  The change in this kiddo was a complete 180.  He/she was MUCH more cooperative and pleasant the rest of the day.  I relented and let him/her out of solitary in the early afternoon.  But the time spent in solitary was enough to do the trick.

Thursday was our last school day of the week (see Friday, below).  So we crammed a whole bunch of assignments into our day.  Taking a long snack break didn't help us stay on track (oops).  But we did our best to get a lot done.  At times, it felt like I was repeatedly bashing my head against a brick wall.  Not sure why I felt that way.  But there ya go.

Friday was a fun day.  I started off the day at a Celebrate Calm workshop and then met my mom and the kids at the Heard Museum of Natural Science. Here are a couple of pics from our outing:

My mom joined us for the fun...

Claire as an owl...

Cade as an owl...

Because if two do it, then the third has to do it too.  Jack as an owl...

Dinosaurs LIVE! was part of an exhibition going on at the museum.  The dinos were very realistic looking (and sounding)

 

 And a lemur...

There was also a butterfly area...

And then some random pics from the week.  Reading rocks! Right Cade?

Claire Bear working on some math.

Jack, reading about Mozart.

A BRILLIANT idea I had was to make these "dollars."  In order to help encourage attitudes to be happy and eager, the kids can earn laminated dollars by doing good work with good attitudes.  Once a month, the kids will buy small toys, $5 gift cards, etc from me.  The kids are THRILLED with this idea, and attitudes have improved!  It's especially fun to reward a kiddo with a dollar and see the jealousy pass over the others' faces.  It makes the others work a little harder so they can earn a dollar too!

And to show that we're not all work around here, here's Cade in a distracted moment (which lasted for about 10 minutes).

And Claire reading.