Weekly Report - Weeks 21&22 - Our First Attempt at a CM Schedule!

I intended to get this report up last weekend but then life happened. ;) Dh threw out his back and I have been taking care of him and attending to all home and kiddo duties while he has been on the mend. Happy to say, he's doing much better now!

Well, I am thrilled that our first two Charlotte Mason inspired weeks went very well. We are still on a huge learning curve but so far, all the changes we've instituted have been very positive!

I am going to "walk" through our schedule and share a tad about each portion of our day.

First, I have been diligent to get up earlier each morning so when I wake the boys promptly at 7:00, I am dressed, have teeth brushed and a bit of makeup on. Miss Mason is huge on habit training, and for this first six weeks our habit training is focused on getting us all in a good solid morning routine...and that includes greeting the day with a joyful and positive spirit. After waking them, we immediately make beds, get dressed, brush teeth and then come downstairs and each do about 15 minutes of morning chores. The boys feed the dog and fish, help unload the dishwasher and set the table. I start a load of laundry, make breakfast and help put away all the breakable dishes. I must say that the hardest part of establishing this morning routine for my boys has been the joyful part! I am a morning person but two of my boys, not so. I am trying to coach them through how to "choose joy" even in the moments when life doesn't go our way. Hmmmm, that's a hard one for grown ups too. (Okay, okay I'll speak for myself...hard for this grown up for sure!) Here are two inspiring quotes on habit training from Miss Mason:

The habits of the child produce the character of the man, because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on forever unless they should be displaced by other habits. Here is an end to the easy philosophy of, 'It doesn't matter,' 'Oh, he'll grow out of it,' "He'll know better by and by,' 'He's so young, what can we expect?' and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.

(Vol.I, p.118 - emphasis mine)

We are not unwilling to make efforts in the beginning with the assurance that by-and-by things will go smoothly...The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.

(Vol.I, p.136)

During breakfast we work on Scripture memory. The Bible verses they are learning come from their AWANA books so I don't have a say in that aspect. I love the AWANA program but if it were up to me, we would learn fewer verses but learn them more thoroughly. We would also work on longer passages. I am wondering if we will continue AWANA next year solely based on the fact that I would like to determine the Bible verses they are commiting to memory in these tender and impressionable years. I would pick verses that would help most with each child's character development in addition to ones that teach the attributes of God that we most want our children to know at this age. It is not possible for us to do both AWANA and our own Scripture memory plan. Too many verses, too little time.

For our daily Bible story we are reading Egermeier's Bible Story Book. The boys have enjoyed it so far and have already learned several stories they have not previously learned in the other story Bibles we've read. We also talk each day about our "Virtue of the Week". We are working though the Fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.

~Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)

Each week we are choosing one fruit to mediate upon and consider ways to produce more of that in each of our lives, myself included! The first week we focused on love and had some really great conversations when I explained that one definition of love (and probably my favorite) is "intentionally discovering another person's needs and choosing to meet them." They thought showing love was just giving physical affection. We talked about how Jesus loved us by meeting our greatest need, the need for a Savior to rescue us from our sin and the punishment that a holy and just God would have to inflict. We then too should show our love by serving one another. Big truths for little minds, to be sure. :)

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.

~Romans 5:8 (ESV)

Math ~ We have taken our math time from 90 minutes a day to 30 minutes. For our first CM week we simply worked with Base 10 blocks each day, adding w/carrying, subtracting w/borrowing, multiplying and dividing. I really want to be certain he understands things like when you carry a "4" in addition or multiplication that you are really are bringing over "4 tens". We had lots of fun. For week two we went back to our Horizons 3 book but are only completing one side of a page each day (rather than a complete lesson, which is front and back) but staying wholly focused for those 15 minutes (with me right them training him to stay on task!). Then when we finish we are reviewing skip counting and doing one or two problems with the Base 10 blocks again.

Reading ~ Thatcher is reading aloud from the Pathway Readers that a sweet friend gave me now that her children are grown. " These stories of family life on an Amish farm are wholesome and delightful and encourage Godly character and moral values." We started back in the first grade books so we could get to know the characters as well as work on all those pesky reading habits of Thatch's I mentioned in my last post. We have already finished the first two and will begin the second grade readers Monday. I am really enjoying these stories. They remind me of the Miller Family Stories that we enjoyed so much last year.

Handwriting ~ not much to report other than I decreased the number of times I required Thatcher to write each letter a la Miss Mason's recommendations. We focused on making a few perfect letters rather than several mediocre ones. My only struggle was knowing that in order to form these new letters automatcially "muscle memory" must be developed and this happens only with repitition. I wondered on Monday of CM Week 2 if he would remember how to form the letters from the previous week or if he would have forgotten. He remembered! He takes great pride in writing carefully to get those three or four perfect letters. The pride on his face shows that Miss Mason was correct.

History ~ We are doing history again! We are still using SOTW as our spine but focusing on the great literature that goes along with each chapter rather than the SOTW reading itself. Previously we were reading the chapter on Monday and doing a narration according to how I learned in The Well Trained Mind. (The way WTM recommends doing narrations is quite distinct from a CM style narration.) Tuesday we would listen to the chapter again on audio CD while completing the corresponding color page and hopefully squeezing in the mapwork. Now we are doing history four days a week. I did start each week reading SOTW and doing a CM style narration. I also had Thatch listen to the audio version in his room at rest-time another day. The rest of the week we spent curled up with my favorite blanket in our reading chair reading Michael Morpurgo's version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Picture Study ~ We are studying Leonardo Da Vinci using prints we got from Ambleside. I will describe more about this in a later post because it deserves a space of it's own! :)

Geography ~ Recently I had a great conversation with Darcy from Life with my 3 Boybarians about her learnings from a CM seminar. The following idea is a direct result of something she shared with me. We are using a magnetic USA puzzle my mom gave Thatch a few years ago. Each day we do geography (2x a week) we set the timer for 10 minutes and see how much of the puzzle he can complete. Each puzzle piece has the name of the state on it and the puzzle base has the outline of each state with the capital but no state name. Now that he can do the entire puzzle in less than five minutes, we are playing, "Name that State Game". After removing all puzzle pieces I point to the outline of a state and he has to tell me what state goes there. Then we'll move on to learning the capitals. I cannot believe how much he has learned in only four geography lessons. Thanks, Darcy. She was right, it doesn't have to be hard! ;)

Science ~ We are finally studying the human body! Currently we are using the My Body book as our spine. In addition I pulled every book we had on the subject and checked out another 20 at the library. The first week we learned all about the brain and the second week was the heart. A few years ago I picked up The Human Body Jigsaw Book in Border's clearance section for just a few dollars. It has five puzzles each focusing on a different part of the human body. I also like this Melissa and Doug two-sided human body puzzle but we haven't added that to our collection yet (any granparents or aunts reading this? ;)

Spanish ~ We are continuing video-based lessons on Discovery Streaming every T, Th. Monday and Wednesday we play games. Under the Christmas tree were a few new Spanish learning games and we've had a ball with those! That will be another blog post, too. :)

Spelling ~ We have only done one lesson each week and my goal is two. Even though Spelling takes just few moments of time each day we keep forgetting it! We will do better next week.

Poetry ~ I don't have my own copy of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson so we checked one out from the library and have enjoyed reading his poems most days at lunch.

Me Reading to Thatch ~ This has been another area that hasn't happened consistently. I may need to tweak our schedule because by this point in the day Beckett is getting tired and not wanting to play by himself. That would be fine if he would cuddle up with us, but he is too much of a talker and a wiggle-worm to allow us any reading time of value. I'll have to noodle on this one....

PE ~ nothing formal yet. Just getting in the habit of setting this time aside to be physical. Many plans to come!

Rest time ~ Oh rest time...my beautiful sanity. ;) The boys are listening to lots of audio books we own (several of Jim Weiss's readings), others we borrowed from the library and Classical Kids' CD's during this time.

We also did our first nature hike of the year but I will save that for another post since this one is already so long!

Weekly Report: Weeks 1-20

I have not done a Weekly Report all year. I am not exactly sure why, but I have a few hunches. This past semester was hard. Very hard. At the start I was dealing with severe first trimester exhaustion and moderate morning sickness. Then came a week long evacuation when Hurricane Ike hit, the eye passing literally over our home. Coming home to see much of where we live in complete shambles was shocking. There were so many meals to cook and newly homeless friends to care for in those weeks following the storm. Just as things were getting back to normal we lost baby number four. I then had surgery and a longer than expected recovery. And throughout this time, Thatcher's ADHD has been raging and the social issues growing more severe as well. Just typing it out brings back some of the emotion that went along with all those events.

I think that was just a part of why I didn't do Weekly Reports though. I think it was mostly because I didn't feel we had much to share. We were just going through the motions in many ways and school felt....well....dull. We managed to keep up with math, logic, grammar, spelling, handwriting and Spanish. We started SOTW 2 and made it to Chapter 4 but with very few of the "extras" that make SOTW so much fun. We did no science. Not one smidge.

I know the reality is that Thatcher was still learning and learning a lot. Yet I knew in my heart that there had to be more; I just wasn't sure what it was or where to find it! Before I report on our first CM inspired week I want to document all Thatcher accomplished in the first half of the school year. Because even if it wasn't all I wanted it to be, it is worth celebrating.

Math: In Horizons 3 Thatcher made it to Lesson 73! There are 160 lessons in every Horizons book so we are almost halfway there. Thatcher is a second grader but we are in the third grade math book because at the age of four he whizzed through both the pre-K book as well as the Kinder math book.

We will be slowing down from here on out because he is now hitting material where I want to be certain he understands the "why" of what he is doing and not just "what" to do. I need to spend a little more time building that concrete knowledge base with the use of manipulatives. I want to be sure when is he borrowing or carrying, or counting into the ten-thousands or multiplying with carrying that he really can "see" it in his head. It is well documented that children who have this solid concrete base do much better once they hit higher level math courses because they have the ability to better "see" planes, rays, angles...in their minds.

Logic: We completed Mind Benders Beginning Book 2 as well as the first 20 lessons in Primarily Logic. We have always enjoyed Mind Benders but Primarily Logic was a huge hit as well. It introduced Thatcher to many different types of logic activities rather than the same puzzle-style problem you find in the Mind Benders books. We completed one lesson every day as our daily warm-up to get our brains going each morning.

Reading: This fall we completed the three books in the Ralph S. Mouse series by Beverly Cleary. Each day Thatcher read to me for 20 minutes and then I would finish up whatever was left of the chapter. Thatcher tackles reading like he does the rest of life - as if his pants are on fire. Lol! :) As a result, in his oral reading he makes tons of mistakes like omitting, skipping, misreading and switching words. And it's not the big words he misses. Those he almost always gets correct. He misses the little words, reading "a" for "the" and other similar mistakes.

This is where I focused this fall. My corrections were frustrating him (ADHD kiddos often get frustrated much more easily than typical kids) so I used what motivates him...money! Each day I set out 20 pennies. For each word he incorrectly read I took one away. At the end of our reading time any money left was his to keep. I never subtracted money if he missed a new word, only when he made a careless error. Boy, did the number of mistakes dramatically decrease almost instantly! I plan on continuing this in this spring semester.

This is an example of where theory sometimes clashes with reality. I remember in college learning about how we want to train our students to be intrinsically (internally) motivated and avoid extrinsic (external) motivators. Things like treats were to be avoided at all costs. The reality though, is that we are all motivated by rewards, praise, recognition...ADHD kids sometimes need rewards even more than their counterparts because they struggle with waiting for the natural rewards to come if they take too long or seem too abstract. If six pennies in my little guy's hand at the end of 20 minutes of sitting still and reading works, then I am okay with that. Actually, I am great with that! :) Not that I want to be bribing him forever, mind you. ;)

Grammar: We started this year in FLL3. FLL 1/2 was not a huge hit because of its primarily oral format. I have a very visual and tactile learner. FLL 3's workbook format was a much better fit for us. It feels like I am being held accountable to actually get the lesson done by that blank page waiting to be filled out, and being able to see everything on the page helped Thatcher so much as well! We made it all the way to Lesson 40, doing grammar two to three days a week.

Handwriting: We are using Classically Cursive for our handwriting instruction this year. Thatcher has learned all of his lower-case cursive letters and sixteen of the upper-case. Thatch has come so incredibly far in his fine motor skills. If I showed you work he did a year ago, you wouldn't believe it was the same child's writing!

Spelling: We started using Spelling Wisdom this year. We tried Spelling Workout in first grade so I knew that wasn't a good fit. Thatcher has a strong grasp of phonics so I didn't want a phonetic-based spelling program. I kept looking until I came across Spelling Wisdom at Simply Charlotte Mason. It was love at first sight, and has been a great spelling program for us. If you haven't yet found your perfect fit for spelling, check this one out. :)

Spanish: We are still using Elementary Spanish on Discovery Streaming and loving it! Thatcher got a new teacher this year who is a man and that's been a lot of fun for him. He is learning so much, and he walks up to anyone of any color (be they Hispanic, Asian, Indian or just olive-skinned) and starts trying to start up a conversation.

Well that's our semester in review. Now...for our CM report!!!



P.S. Dh, Thank you for my new "Weekly Report" button. :)

Weekly Report - Weeks 26-31

It's been sooo long since I've posted a Weekly Report - six weeks to be exact. We've been plugging along with not much new to report. Still here is a quick overview of where we are.

Math - We are up to lesson 150. Ten lessons to go and we are finished with Horizons 2. Yahoo! Today Thatcher took his test and made 91%. I couldn't be more pleased. We don't do all the supplemental worksheets, suggested activities and flash cards listed in the TM. I started out trying to do it all and it was just leading to frustration for both of us. The only thing we do in addition to the actual lesson is skip count each day. He now knows how to skip count to 100 by all numbers 1-10. We are spending time reviewing these since he still gets a little confused here and there.

Reading - We have been reading the first four books in the Encyclopedia Brown series. It's so fun to share this series with him because I also enjoyed them as a child. The author, Donald Sobol, even visited my elementary school when I was in fourth grade. I was so ready to stop reading Magic Tree House books I was about to scream. They were wonderful as starter chapter books but they long ago served their purpose. This seemed like a good series to move to. The unplanned benefits is that it has really supplemented our start to logic. He has to pay careful attention to the details of each story to try and solve the mystery. He hasn't solved one on his own yet but with some loving guidance from Mommy, he has gotten close a few times. I feel like he is finally starting to learn how to think and not just what to think!

I mentioned in a previous post, but we've also been reading Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Book 1. I also read a chapter to him in Prudence and the Millers every day as well.


Logic - He loves Mind Benders and asks to do these first every day. Next year we are going to branch out a little more (but that's another post!) but for now these are a perfect start!

Spanish - United Streaming Elementary Spanish has been a wonderful start for us. I really think that one of the reasons is Thatch likes hearing another voice other than mine ;) We will finish our fifth unit next week and then take a break this summer to focus on all the Spanish games and activities we own.

Spelling - SWO B is going well. We are up to Lesson 12 and Thatcher has yet to miss one on any test. I have decided to keep him going to build confidence and teach him to follow directions. He loves workbooks (sigh) and looks forward to finishing his assigned pages every day. We are currently doing two lessons a week. I am not planning on continuing with SWO next year as I have found some terrific resources that (I feel) will do all that SWO does and more!

Grammar - Not happening. I have realized that if we don't have a page to fill in it doesn't get done (double sigh). This is a me problem, not a Thatcher issue. I need to make some decisions about this for next year with this in mind. We do talk about grammar through copywork and in stories we read but nothing formal is being taught. I know so many say that formal grammar isn't necessary until later but I still feel guilty about this.

History - We are up to chapter 34 and will complete two chapters a week to complete SOTW 1 by the end of the month. Luckily lots of these chapters can easily lump together so it won't be bad at all. SOTW has been a great start to our history journey. This year we have basically stuck with reading the story in the book, completing the coloring page, map and doing a narration for each chapter. I have lots of ideas for next year in this area too!

Science - Nothing formal happening here either. But do you want to know something that made me feel better today? A friend of mine kept Beckett while Thatcher, Haddon and I went into town on a field trip. Now granted this friend has three children of her own, one of whom is a boy.Yet after keeping my little man for four hours she said, "I don't know how you get anything done with that one! He is into everything!!!!" Amen, sister. You take your eyes off him for five minutes and he is flooding your bathroom and water is pouring through your downstairs light fixtures. Ask dh how he learned this lesson ;) This kid is a mess. I love him with all my being but boy the stories I will have to tell at his rehearsal dinner someday!

I will do another Report once we have finished our school year. :) Yahoo! I get excited just typing that.

Weekly Report - Weeks 23, 24 & 25

It's been three weeks since my last weekly report. Even though they have become less frequent they are just as important for me. Thatcher loves seeing his work online; it gives him a great sense of satisfaction! I love having a place to "think out loud" and process. That said, here is our (multi)weekly report:

Math : Horizons is still going well, and I'm happy to say we finally started our supplemental math program (I will link to it soon. Right now their site is down). I love it! It only takes five minutes a day but it encourages a different kind of thinking. Thatcher has really enjoyed it, too. We've only done the first four lessons, so I'll keep you updated on how it's going as we continue to work through it. One of the best things...this program is free! :)

In the past few weeks on the WTM Curriculum Board there have been very encouraging threads about how well dc are prepared after working through Horizons from beginning to end. All of the moms who have used it K-6 said their children were more than ready for higher levels of math, and most added that they didn't supplement Horizons at all. You can read all the reviews in the world from "experts" but for me there's nothing like a "It's worked for me and my dc." from a respected mom who has been there, done that!

Spelling: This week we started Spelling Workout B. Thatcher has been so excited to have a change from ETC after 3 years. SWO B starts out very easy but increases in complexity pretty rapidly. I want Thatch to experience success to build confidence with a new program. One of the things I like best is the new skills he is learning: ABC order and editing were introduced just in Lesson 1.
Grammar: Here is what we have been doing for Grammar since we dropped FLL -

Each day I write two new sentences on the board ~ usually something that will be of high interest to Thatcher. These sentences were about his Daddy coming home from Washington. :) First he recites the required definitions to me and then he underlines all nouns and circles all verbs. This is working well for us.

Poetry Memorization: Now that we are not doing FLL I also had to come up with a way not to forget poetry memorization each day, too. I went through FLL and The Harp and Laurel Wreath and chose poems I wanted Thatch to learn for the remainder of this year. I wrote them on our "Memory Work Chart" and we review that week's poem each day. Right now Thatcher is learning "The Whole Duty of Children" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Logic: We also started Mind Benders this week. To say that Thatch loves it is an understatement. He has always loved detective stories and, to him, this is just like solving a mystery!

History: We are still learning about Ancient Greece. Thatcher loves this period in history. Here are the two books we finished this week and Thatcher wearing a toga (admittedly not a very good one but Thatcher loved it nonetheless).


Science: We finished our unit on animals a few weeks ago and we have yet to start our human body study (my fault - can't get it all prepared with everything else going on lately). We did enjoy some nature study this week at our local nature trails.

We wondered what all has called this place home!

Thatch was fascinated with the idea of termites eating this tree. He asked me,
"Will you put this on your blog, please?"

My personal favorite of the day: West Indian Lantana
Yahoo! My first flower to identify all by myself thanks to this site!


This is from a beautiful garden someone planted behind their fence that
backed up to the trail we were on. Not sure what this one is.

From the same garden but couldn't identify this one either.
I made the assumption it was a type of daisy???


We enjoyed a picnic lunch and some playtime at the park before we started our hike. I had to include these photos just for the sake of a mommy brag!

Spanish: United Streaming continues to go well but like with several things I needed to step it up a notch (even if all I can manage is a tiny notch right now. Lol!) Here is a copy of the letter Thatcher sent to his Spanish penpal, Grace. I met her mom, Tammy, through the WTM board and learned they would be using US for Spanish too.

The other thing I am doing is being more deliberate to use the things we already own on the days we are not watching Sra. Cano on US. You can see some of these things in an old post about Spanish. Here Thatch is playing with Spanish matching cards ~ while balancing a lid on his head!

One more thing: These past few weeks I have gotten back to writing a checklist of all we need to accomplish each day on our dry erase board. I did this at the start of the year but dropped it because it seemed redundant and tedious. Recently, as I though of ways to speed up our days this came back to me. I can really tell how much Thatcher has matured this year because of how well he is using this tool to help him navigate his day. He loves to check those boxes and move on to the next thing! You can see, it's nothing fancy - just very practical (at least for us!).

And one last photo, just to make you smile. Here is my sweet Haddon dressed up like "Super Batman" (notice the cape and the mask!) while holding his favorite bear. How cute is that?!

Weekly Report - Weeks 21&22

Bible - For our Bible curriculum we do a mix of several things. Thatcher is involved in AWANA at a local church near us. It's his third year to participate and he loves it! If you are unfamiliar with AWANA, it's a fabulous program. The kids wear vests like in scouts and they earn jewels in a crown for memorizing verses and reciting them to a leader each week. They also earn AWANA bucks for different things that they can spend in the AWANA store a few times a year as well. There's so much more but that's the jist!

As a family we've slowly been working through Leading Little Ones to God for our morning family worship time. It's hard to do something as a family with kids of all different ages. LLOTG is way above Haddon's head but right on for Thatcher. Still Haddon is learning the value of sitting and listening as Daddy teaches. Then we sing a song and pray before we conclude. That's Haddon and Beckett's favorite part! Lol.

We also are always reading our way through one story Bible or another. Earlier this year it was The Jesus Storybook Bible and now it's....

Breakfast Reading - The Big Picture Story Bible. This Bible is similar to the Jesus Storybook Bible but is geared for preschoolers. All the boys are enjoying it though. We try to read at breakfast and lunch because they are a captive audience! :)

Lunch Reading - This week our Aesop's fable was "A Bundle of Sticks" and the moral was "In unity is strength". It was a perfect story for my boys who sometimes (okay, often) fight more than they should!

I also am still reading different Mother Goose stories to the boys at lunch. Beckett loves the cadence of these readings. As soon as I open a book he starts bobbing his head in anticipation of the rhythmic reading to come. It is so stinkin' cute!

Still More Reading :) - As soon as the little men go to sleep, Thatcher and I curl up on the couch for some reading time with just the two of us! This past week he read Hour of the Olympics to me and I read The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus to him.

Math - Horizons and math copywork are still going well! I still haven't managed to get in any of the great supplemental things we have but for now, that's okay.

History - Here are two of Thatcher's History Scribe Narration pages from SOTW. I just love his illustrations. He's come so far! At the start of this year he was only drawing a face with eyes, a nose and a mouth to represent a person. His coloring too! I should show you coloring he did this August for comparison. My little boy is growing up. Sigh.

Science - This week concluded our study of animals. We celebrated by going to the Houston Zoo to see each animal we studied, plus lots of others. The celebration only lasted 2 hours before we were scrambling to find a restroom where Thatcher could lose his lunch. Poor baby!

Spanish - In this unit Thatcher is learning the days of the week, the months of the year and counting. Also, Thatcher just got his first letter from his Spanish penpal, Grace. Tammy over at Evergreen Eclectic Academy agreed to let her beautiful daughter correspond with my little man. And she didn't even give up on me when we forgot to write our first letter! I'll take a picture of Thatcher's first letter for next week's report.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week next week!

Weekly Report - Week 20

I usually only do slide shows with subtitles for each photo, but this one was too cute to pass up!

Photo 1 - We just finished Lesson 100 in Horizons 2 and he made 92% on his test! Two days this week he finished his math assignment in 30 minutes and earned time to stay up late at bedtime and play board games with Mommy or Daddy!

Photos 2 &3 - The large chart is how we have been reviewing our skip counting most days (simply oral recitation while looking at the chart) but it just wasn't sticking. This method works beautifully for poetry memorization but was failing us here. I remembered Jessica at Trivium Academy is teaching Camille her math facts through copywork so I tried it with this skill, too. You know what? We had been reviewing this every single day for 2 weeks with limited success. He wrote it these few times and had it down pat! Yahoo!!!!!

Photos 4, 5 & 6 - Here is our science work from this week: a bear profile page, a tiger profile page and copywork to go along with each. Thatcher always says how much he is enjoying filling out these pages and I am learning lots too! :)

Photo 7 - SOTW Narration from Chapter 20: Greece Gets Civilized Again - using History Scribe Notebooking Pages. I have really been working with Thatcher on choosing just the most important details to include in his narrations. This is such a hard skill for anyone but especially to a little boy for whom every detail is crucial in all areas of life. Lol!

Photo 8 - A few pages of Explode the Code Book 8. Thatcher was excited to see a few new activities in this book. This is our third year using ETC so a change was refreshing for him!

Photo 9 - I am currently reading The Iliad to Thatcher and he is reading Storytime with the Millers to me. The Iliad is following up our readings of Mary Pope Osborne's Tales from the Odyssey but this version is a little more (okay, a lot more) graphic. It is a war after all but yikes! I don't think I would be reading this to a little girl but Thatch loves it.

Photo 10 - Now that we finished up The Jesus Storybook Bible (still the best children's Bible of all time, in my opinion!) we are reading the Big Picture Story Bible. We read one story each morning at breakfast. Also T-Th we do family devotionals from Leading Little Ones to God with Daddy before he leaves for work.

Photo 11 - The big man himself! I forgot to take any photos of him actually doing his work this week so I went up to his room this afternoon and asked him if I could take a photo. He wanted to pose with his favorite trophy from last basketball season.

Happy new week to all! :)

Weekly Report Week 19

As I logged onto the computer to type out our first Weekly Report of the new semester I realized I never did a report on weeks 17 and 18. Oops! I'm not even going to attempt to remember what we did a month ago and am just going to plow ahead. Here we go...

Math: I usually type this first since it's the first thing we do each day. In an attempt to speed up my little man, I have started a "Math Challenge" with Thatcher. Each day we set a timer and I've told him that every day he completes the lesson in less than 30 minutes he gets to stay up 30 minutes later at bedtime to either read or have me come play a board game with him. Two days this week he accomplished the goal and we played games together. It was so fun! Playing games is something we *rarely* do with an 19 month old around so I am hoping he wins more math challenges this week. One thing I need to do better at is helping Thatcher learn to count by 6's, 7's and 8's. He can count by 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 9's and 10's all the way to 100. I've just stalled out on teaching these last three. Other than that all is the same: Horizons 2 and just plugging along.

Reading: This week Thatcher started reading Storytime with the Millers aloud to me. I read Wisdom and the Millers to him earlier this year and he fell in love with the characters, so it's been great to revisit them. Many a great conversation has been started after reading one of the Miller stories! The covers are most definitely outdated but don't let that scare you away from these wonderful stories if you've not ever heard of them. I haven't made it back to the library so we were a little slim on our other readings this week. Next year I hope to make the library a twice a month trip of all of us but right now I go alone to choose books. It's too difficult with Beckett still being so young and into everything!

Phonics: We finished Book 7 in Explode the Code and will start Book 8 next week! Thatcher is so excited to be almost done with phonics and can't wait to start Spelling Workout in just a few weeks! I am sold on ETC and definitely plan on using this series again with Haddon although I am not yet sure of his learning style. Therefore, I reserve the right to change my mind. Lol! There are tons of great programs out there so I won't be at a loss if I need to shop around.

History and Science: SOTW...what can I say. I love it! I rarely do any projects or extra activities but it's working. Next year I hope to do so much more in this area. Right now on Monday we read the selection, do a narration and look up any additional information in one of our reference books. (For what it's worth...my favorite reference has been the Usborne Book of World History. I thought I would like Kingfisher History Encyclopedia or Usborne's Encyclopedia of World History. We own all three but find ourselves looking at the former 10x more than the latter.) On Tuesday we review that lesson, do the coloring page and the mapwork.

Life Science is going beautifully. Thatcher loves the Animal Profile pages that Jessica at Trivium Academy created and he's looking forward to starting our study of the human body in a few weeks. One of the nice things about living in the fourth largest city in the country is that we have amazing resources available to us. The Houston Health Museum is 40 minutes from my home and a treasure to be sure. My in-laws bought the boys passes for Christmas and we had a ball on our first trip two weeks ago. It will be a perfect supplement to our new study about to start. The picture shows the room in the museum that focuses on the Central Nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. Pretty neat, huh?

That's about all for this Weekly Report. I'll take more photos of Thatcher's actual work this coming week and maybe a photo or two of my cutie pies!

Weekly Report - Week 16

Our weeks are so routine at this point that sometimes I feel yet another Weekly Report will bore anyone to death reading my blog. Then I remind myself that these reports are a great way to track our journey, keep us focused and celebrate all we've accomplished.

This week I am going to start with a little bit of what Haddon is doing. We are going to start a little preschool in January - although I have no idea how I will work it into our schedule. This semester we have casually been working on learning to sing the ABC's and recognizing a few letters, counting to 10, reviewing colors and shapes, learning Mother Goose Rhymes, reading lots of board books every day and learning finger rhymes.

Below is our current Mother Goose book we read every day at lunch. I have three different Mother Goose books that we rotate so that we don't get bored. It's so cute to hear him walk around the house singing, "Hey Diddle, Diddle," "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" and "Humpty Dumpty"!

And because our time is so limited I have allowed these videos to teach Haddon his ABC's and how to count. They have done their job well, I might add. He can sing the ABC song, knows most of his letters and many of the sounds just from watching each video one time a week.

Here is Thatcher's Horizons Math Test from this week. He got 89% correct!


Here is his narration from Chapter 16 of SOTW1: The Return of Assyria. The illustration shows Ashurbanipal holding one of the clay tablets from the library he created in Nineveh. Thatch said he was smiling so big because he was happy to have all those books!


And here is Thatcher's copywork from science this week. We studied about flamingos and peacocks. We read from the Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia, followed up with more books from the library and completed our animal profile page too.

We have also been enjoying our readings of Aesop's Fables. Each week we focus on one story and read and discuss it each day at lunch. This version is wonderful and I would highly recommend it.

Weekly Report - Weeks 14-15

Here is my weekly report for the past 2 weeks of school - one before Thanksgiving and one after. We are finally in a good rhythm - and it only took four months to get there! Lol.

Math is plugging along; nothing new to report there. One lesson continues to take an hour but I am getting used to it and it does not bother Thatcher. He chooses to start with Math every single day! I have not been drilling his math facts nor practicing his skip counting since we are already spending so much time just completing the lesson. He can count to 100 by 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 9's and 10's. And he's almost half-way there with the 6's. If I would just count out loud to him every single day once or twice he would get it within a week or so. It seems like such a small thing but all those small things can sure add up!

Language is not happening. I am not sure why since it only takes a few minutes a day but we haven't done it in 3 weeks. It just isn't as fun as history, science or Spanish which are the other subjects we do in the afternoon and it just seems to get put to the side. I am going to try to pick up where we left off this week.

Reading is going very well and tonight I actually found Thatcher reading a Magic Tree House book all by himself. He is capable of reading above that level but because of his ADHD he struggles to focus when he sees that many words on a page. Because of that, for his independent reading I have kept him in longer picture books to minimize his frustrations, and we read all chapter books together.

If your child is in the same boat - somewhere between easy readers/picture books and chapter books - and you need some new ideas for reading here are some of our favorite series so far:

• Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
  
• Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant
  
• Poppleton by Cynthia Rylant
  
• Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
• Commander Toad by Jane Yolen
• Mr. Putter and Tabby by Cynthia Rylant

If you have any others, please leave a comment. We're always happy for new ideas :)

For our read together time we are enjoying the Tales from the Odyssey series by Mary Pope Osborne. Thatcher loves these books more than any other we have ever read together. I would highly recommend them, especially if you have boys (Cyclops getting gored in the eye with a burning log may upset a few girly-girls!). The story has captivated his imagination and each day he can't wait to hear what adventures Odysseus will find.

Spanish is going great as well. Thatcher loves watching Sra. Cano on United Streaming and he is retaining a lot more than I thought he would. Most importantly he is excited about Spanish and is learning to love the culture which are some of my biggest goals for this year!

History and Science are great! Some days I wish we could spend much more time on these than anywhere else. Thatcher loves these subjects and to be honest, I am learning so much!

The week before Thanksgiving we went on a field trip to a wonderful place called Dewberry Farm. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from that day.

How do you like the shirts dh had made for all of us at the start of the year?! We wear them anytime we go on an outing. It makes it a lot easier to keep up with everyone and the boys are so proud to have their own school shirts!

Week 13 Report

This week was full...full of good and not so good. I'll share the good first. That's so much more fun!

Math (Horizons 2) is going well and next semester we are going to try to start supplementing with this program. I looked at tons of great programs but this one won out for now - mainly because it's free and has lots of what I am looking for: activities to encourage thinking "outside the box".

Language - We didn't touch FLL lessons this week. We'll play catchup next week.

Reading - We are struggling a little here. Thatcher has regressed in his oral reading skills again. He mumbles, skips words, inserts new words and is generally showing some laziness. We are stopping Magic Tree House books for the time being hoping that some fresh books will inject some life into this aspect of school.

History is still going very well. I had pretty much stopped doing narrations (just hard to fit it all in) but after reading several threads relating to the value of narrations on the Well Trained Mind Boards I was encouraged to start back up again. Here is his narration from Chapter 13 of SOTW1. I copied down his narration but had him write the title. I loved his artwork, too! It shows Hatshepsut on her throne wearing a crown and surrounded by gold!

Science - We are playing catch up in this area but we are loving the life science plans Jessica created and shared at her blog, Trivium Academy! Here are two of his animal profile pages from this week: worms and ants. He is really enjoying learning to draw the animals. Coloring and drawing have been a long time coming for us and are just starting to emerge but oh how fun!




Spanish - We just completed Unit 1 of the Elementary Spanish program on United Streaming. Thatcher scored 100% on his test! We have acquired a Spanish pen pal for Thatcher, too! I'll post more about that later. :)


Just for fun here are pictures of Thatcher (wearing his red-eyed tree frog glasses!) and Haddon (wearing his new birthday outfit from his paternal grandparents) from this week.
Now for the not so good. We have had a tough few weeks with Thatch; I am at a loss for how to help him many days. He is stuck in a negative spiral, and I don't know how to break the cycle. His ADHD/SPD/Spectrum Disorder stuff is really rearing it's head: emotional outbursts when life doesn't happen just the way he thinks it should, disrespect, impatience with his brothers (more than just normal "sibling stuff") and more. Raising kids is *tough*. Period. No matter what. Raising a kiddo with special needs is sometimes downright...I can't even think of a word to describe it: exhausting, sad, make you want to crawl under the sheets and hide some days...

We are starting fish oil supplements on Monday as some have had great success in treating ADHD this natural way. Oh, if it could truly be that easy for us! We are also getting more strict on his diet as I've grown a little lax since school has started: absolutely no sugar, refined flour or white rice, no dyes, additives or preservatives and limited dairy and wheat. I am also researching a parenting/behavior program that may work for us as well. I will post more as I learn about this as well.

Next week is a new week and I am looking forward to a fresh start!