An update, and a weekly report...

It has been an incredibly hectic, overly busy week. My dad had two more doctor's appointments this week, and each one took hours, hours that the kids spent with their Nonna rather than me. And I had my classes, etc. Too much going on. Still, the kids are making progress, and next week, with no appointments, will be so much calmer!

Language Arts
Cyrus is continuing to work in Writing Tales. This week he worked on Lesson 20, Alexander & Bucephalus. He read the story, did copywork, vocabulary and grammar work, and is writing his own version. He'll finish up his version over the next week, and I may allow him to try typing it. He also worked on spelling words from the Natural Speller, which I entered into a list over at Spelling City. He loved the word search and crossword puzzle games! I plan to have him take the spelling test today, since we didn't get to it during the week. He finished Arthur and the Minimoys, and has moved on to book three in the Percy Jackson series.

Cassia is working in Explode the Code on short "i" sounds. She also did 4 lessons over at ClickNKids Phonics. I entered short "a" words from ETC into Spelling City for her as well, and she loved Hang-mouse! She gets overly concerned with perfectionism a bit, and did one phonics lesson (on the computer) 3 times to make sure she got everything right. I plan to also pull out the flash cards this week and build her confidence with letter sounds. She is hovering right on the edge of actually reading, and I am having a hard time waiting for it all to click! Deep breaths.... I can wait. She will get it, sooner or later! We finished Ramona the Pest and will start the next one later today.

We're almost done with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The kids have asked me to go ahead and put the fourth one on hold. I will say, I love Jim Dale as the narrator! He is very consistant with the speed of his reading, and the voices he uses.

Math
It has been a Math Mammoth week, and I think we'll stick with this for a while. Cyrus is working on a unit in measurements and Cassia is working on telling time. I bought a laser printer, which I love, love, love, and printed out a bunch of fun math puzzles/games/coloring activities as well, which they've been doing after finishing their regular lessons.

Other
There has been next to no history and science this week. Whoops! I failed to get everything ready ahead of time, and then was just too busy to get to it. I did make it to the library on Friday, and got books on Columbus and various science topics. And Bill Nye videos, so I already feel much more organized. I am trying to get it to the point where we only need to go to the library every two-three weeks, instead of once or twice a week.

Oh, they did learn a bit about life during the Great Depression. Cassia got Kit Kittridge: American Girl from the library, and we watched that. It was a pretty good movie! They have watched Natty Gann before and we compared parts of it to that, like life on the rails for a girl, hobo towns, etc.

And they both played a bunch of physics games on the computer, and watched a couple of science documentaries, so it did get covered in a sense.

Next week, I plan to send Spanish Explorers with them to their Nonna's on my longer school day, and after I finish blogging, I'll print up everything needed for next week. Having them do part of their work at her house is really helpful, and generally leaves me more time for the "fun" topics at home.

I am finding that telling them what I need done each day and then allowing them to do it in bits and pieces is working well too. That way, they get plenty of time to explore their own interests, and we're not stuck at the table for longer periods of time. This week I also want to build in more exercise time for all of us. And we have my science class... Cyrus suggested we do something on the human body. I just downloaded a Scholastic book on fun human anatomy projects, so I'll prep most of it from that. So it will still be a slightly busy week, but busy in a less frantic, time-consuming way. Hope its a good week for you!