For some reason, this felt like the longest week ever, even though Dave had Monday off. I don't know why; it wasn't an especially difficult week or a particularly unusual week in any way. Shrug. Anyway, we spent the day geocaching with friends on Monday. Said friends had also gotten GPSs for Christmas, but this was the first time out for all of them. We went to a park with some trails nearby, and the kids spent a long time tramping through the woods in search of treasure. We looked for three caches and found two, then headed over to another park to eat lunch, play, and find one more cache. The weather was lovely, and everyone had a good time.
We started Sentence Island and Practice Island this week, and.....Ari LOVES it. Huh. This isn't what happened when we did Grammar Island in the fall. Ari says things like, "Can I please do TWO sentences from Practice Island?!" "Weird," I thought to myself, "he's acting just like those kids on the message board." Ari, you see, rarely admits to liking anything. When he was six, I remember asking myself, "is it a problem that my six year old is the most cynical person I know?" He's a little better these days, but still, actually saying that he likes something is an incredibly big deal. We've been reading through Music of the Hemispheres and Building Language, too.
Other language arts news: Ari is almost finished with the last Harry Potter. He'll probably finish it this weekend, so back to his list for Monday, I guess. I found Maniac McGee at the thrift store, so I might suggest that to him. Ari's Writing With Ease is still going well, at least in comparison to how it was going before. He doesn't love it, but he hasn't been crying about it anymore.
Milo's doing well with WWE and FLL (his feelings for WWE are opposite Ari's; he doesn't mind narration in the least, but hates the copywork). He's been reading Frog and Toad and Dav Pilkey's "Dragon Tales" that I picked up at the thrift store. The kids are into dragons. It's actually a little less challenging than Frog and Toad and the other Level 2 readers; it might have been better to give him as an independent read.
Math: moving right along. I've started setting the timer for 20 or 25 minutes with Milo's Right Start and stopping wherever we are after that. Sometimes that's enough time to finish a lesson, and sometimes it spills over into the next day. His attention span just isn't long enough for 45 minutes of math, and I sometimes found myself rushing through or skipping things to get finished. So we'll do this, and we'll probably be doing math all summer. But that's okay, because Dave will be home, and HE can take over math for the summer! This week he started clocks, with hours and half hours, and had no trouble with that. Ari's working on decimals in Singapore 4B, and isn't having any trouble there either.
History: we finally finished Gold Rush Days, and I think now we know a lot more about the Yukon gold rush than we do about, say, the Civil War. That was a long book. Now we need to plan a field trip to a gold mine in Dahlonega. I need to see if I can get a group of 25 together, so that we can get the group rate. Anyone want to go? :) Now we're reading If You're Name was Changed at Ellis Island... and we just started Welcome to Samantha's World-1904: Growing Up in America's New Century.
Science: we did another experiment from our Science in a Nutshell kit, this one on afterimages. We stared at colored dots and then looked at white sheets of paper. Gus kept kind of looking all around or staring into space when he was supposed to be looking at the dot, and then, when asked what color his afterimage was, he'd say, "umm, white" or "sort of bluish?" I'm not sure he learned much about afterimages. I need to order the next kit, so we can start doing it with L and M, who should be coming over on Tuesdays starting next week.
I have book club to do Monday, and I'm not exactly ready for it. We're talking about The Cricket in Times
Square, and I have, at least, finished the book. I need to go through and figure out what we're going to talk about, though.
I've been thinking/planning a lot for next year, too, but maybe that needs its own post. Later!
5 comments:
Hhmm, my middle son is one of the most apathetically cynical people I know. So, I'm right there with ya. Glad you found something your guy likes!
This did seem like a long week. I felt like I was dragged over the finish line.
Geo-caching sounds like so much fun. I don't know much about it. It is like a treasure hunt but with a lot of people, right?
Your little Milo reminds me of my son with his dislike for copywork.
Daisy--geocaching doesn't necessarily have a lot of people; it just worked out that way for us this week. Basically, people hide "caches" (usually with little prizes in them to trade for) and post the GPS coordinates online. Then you use your GPS to find them.
lol at the "just like those kids on the message board" part.
Sounds like a good week!
I think MY middle son is the most cynical person alive! Glad to know he isn't the only grouchy old man stuck in a little person's body! Enjoyed reading about your week. And I like your new background--I think the picture does look good with your header.
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