Happy Not-Back-to-School Day for us! All the public schools in our area started up today, which by the way seems really early, especially since they are considering cutting 5 days from the school calendar to save money. Anyhow, it was a morning of children going past our house to the elementary school right down the street - clean, shiny, in stiff new clothes, with new notebooks loaded in their backpacks... I admit, as a child I loved the first day of school! I loved having all the new supplies, the new clothes, a good tan after a summer spent mostly outdoors, seeing friends I hadn't seen in a couple of months. I think that nostalgia is one of the (several) reasons we start back in early September. I do go out and buy new supplies - I have a thing for those unused, unopened boxes of crayons, packages of paper, and newly sharpened pencils. And yes, I will be buying new clothes for my kiddos, mostly because they have outgrown nearly all of last year's fall and winter clothing. They do get a first day of school of sorts, both here at home, and at the charter school we use for art classes.
But today, we are hanging out, watching cartoons, and having french toast. We unfortunately stayed up far too late last night, and as a result missed roller skating, but we'll still have a good day, not going back to school.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
A Short Weekly Report...
Still pretty laid back this week, although we're progressively picking up the pace in preparation for a full return to academics the first week of September.
Elf:
He did a couple of pages of review work from Saxon Math 2 (pages we had previously skipped). One of them was an assessment page, on which I am proud to announce he got 100%.
He is now reading The Magic Finger, along with his daily dose of Calvin & Hobbes. He is writing a story (on the computer) about himself as a knight, and hand-writing in a Scholastic story-starter booklet about a lonely giant. He also completed another 3 pages in Explode the Code 4.
In addition, he has been collecting and trying to identify rocks of various sorts.
Fairy:
She has been working diligently on letter recognition. I printed out some basic letter pages from Learning Page, in hopes that writing the letters repeatedly will help her form that connection.
She has also done a couple of pages of math this week, both from a cheap kindergarten book I got somewhere and from Saxon Math 1. Her addition and subtraction skills are pretty sharp!
Both:
We finished reading the Gilgamesh Trilogy this week and are now shifting our focus to Ancient Egypt. We got Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs, along with Pyramids! 50 Hands-On Activities from the library and will start with those on Monday, plus we will have more books coming in soon. I am hoping we can go see this at the end of summer.
Scientifically speaking, the kids, and M, are having great fun playing around with projects from The Science Explorer (a great book from the San Francisco Exploratorium). So far the projects have been quite easy to do, with no special items needed - I really recommend this book!
And there's our week!
Elf:
He did a couple of pages of review work from Saxon Math 2 (pages we had previously skipped). One of them was an assessment page, on which I am proud to announce he got 100%.
He is now reading The Magic Finger, along with his daily dose of Calvin & Hobbes. He is writing a story (on the computer) about himself as a knight, and hand-writing in a Scholastic story-starter booklet about a lonely giant. He also completed another 3 pages in Explode the Code 4.
In addition, he has been collecting and trying to identify rocks of various sorts.
Fairy:
She has been working diligently on letter recognition. I printed out some basic letter pages from Learning Page, in hopes that writing the letters repeatedly will help her form that connection.
She has also done a couple of pages of math this week, both from a cheap kindergarten book I got somewhere and from Saxon Math 1. Her addition and subtraction skills are pretty sharp!
Both:
We finished reading the Gilgamesh Trilogy this week and are now shifting our focus to Ancient Egypt. We got Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs, along with Pyramids! 50 Hands-On Activities from the library and will start with those on Monday, plus we will have more books coming in soon. I am hoping we can go see this at the end of summer.
Scientifically speaking, the kids, and M, are having great fun playing around with projects from The Science Explorer (a great book from the San Francisco Exploratorium). So far the projects have been quite easy to do, with no special items needed - I really recommend this book!
And there's our week!
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