Weekly Report: March 10-14

I feel like we did a bunch of running around this week (I think we're coming out of that traditional hibernating time of year, and it's going to be harder to stay home), but we still seem to have done a fair amount here.

I mentioned the moon phases book we made last week, but didn't post a picture, and I just happen to have one, so here it is. And then this week we made sponge painted suns. On the

backs are lists of things we need the sun for. We read about the sun in First Encyclopedia of Space and watched a video on United Streaming about the solar system. We were supposed to go outside and do something with a coin to demonstrate how a solar eclipse works, but we didn't quite get around to it.














We did 2 chapters in Story of the World this week, as I realized we're going to have to pick up the pace a bit if we want to finish by June so we can start the Winterpromise American history stuff (and we do. Or at least I do, because I just ordered it a couple of days ago and I'm bad at waiting). We learned about Joan of Arc and a bunch of other war stuff. I was never a huge fan of history in school because my eyes glaze over and I can't keep things straight when it comes to the war parts. And there are so many war parts. I'm completely fascinated by political history, and I'm interested in daily life kind of stuff (and my best papers in grad school were of a historical criticism bent). But not war stuff. The kids don't care much for it, either, at least not so far. The Joan of Arc parts seem to be what sunk in the most with everyone (including me). There's an absurd game suggested in the SOTW activity guide, wherein kids are supposed to put all their stuffed animals together in a big mob, designate one of them as the Dauphin, and then have someone come in pretending to be Joan of Arc and try to guess which animal is the Dauphin in disguise. The connection between this and the real event seems tenuous at best, since there is no pretense that God is guiding the process, but I suppose it does make an impression. So the kids set everything up and I came in to try to guess the Dauphin (it was the panda), and then I thought that perhaps it was such a great game that the kids would entertain themselves for hours (or at least 20 minutes) doing it themselves. But no. There was some sort of Dauphin-guessing catastrophe with much screaming about 15 seconds after I left the room, and all the fun was over. Alas. They also watched (and very much liked) an animated video about Joan of Arc on United Streaming. And we made pop-up Tower of London cards! About 2 hours after this picture was taken, Gus got ahold of the glue and dumped it all over the back of Ari's card ("me glue it!"). I salvaged the tower itself, but the rest of it's a goner.

Gus woke up early from his nap, so of course he had to make a pop-up Tower of London card, too.














I got ahead of myself on math predictions; turns out Ari has just finished up the money stuff and is about to do a few pages of review before moving on to fractions, and Milo just finished EB 2a on Friday (we tend to only do math a couple of times a week for Milo. Our general pattern is that I'll do stuff with Ari while he does Headsprout (and Gus watches) until he gets bored. Then when Ari's working independently, I read a couple of books to Gus and Milo. Then Ari plays with Gus while I do either math or handwriting or some other workbook for a few minutes with Milo). Math pages in the slide show below.

Ari starts up an art class this coming week. He's not at all looking forward to it, because he doesn't look forward to new things, but I think he'll enjoy it once he gets used to it. That is his general pattern. His friend Lula is in it, too. He and Lula have kind of a weird relationship, which I think is mostly because they both like to be in charge and because Milo has a big crush on Lula, and Ari doesn't like Milo taking orders from someone else. So I think it will be good for the two of them to be in a class where Milo is not and where neither of them is in charge.

Ari and Milo have been planning a "rocket party" for their (4 day apart) birthdays for months now, but now that things are really getting down to the wire (only 3 months to go), the planning has kicked into high gear. Here is the (front of) a sheet Ari carries around with him everywhere for taking notes about the party:

He can't think of anything yet for "Other Important Stuff." hee hee.