By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge
the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. ~Proverbs 24:3-4
• Aug. 23, 2007 - Our First Week!
Our first week is over with and it went well! In the morning of our first day, my ds was thrilled to be doing at school at home. By the end of the day, he was asking if it was too late to sign up for public school. I told him we had to work things out and to give it a month or so. He thought that he did too much work. As the week progressed, it seemed lighter and he was happier. We even finished by noon on Thursday! On Friday, he gave the week 10 out of 10. Yeah!!
Observations:
- Although I love my 9:30 exercise classes, they really mess up the day. Plus Mark is home by himself for 1.5 hr while I do that. Mei goes with me and gets socialized (i.e. plays with other kids).
- Mark's LA seems to be heavy on assignments on Mondays.
- Mei's work takes a whole lot less time, so she then wants to bother or distract Mark. One reason is because it is 1st grade work and there is just less of it. The other is that she is focuses better than Mark.
- Mark loves his math and even his spelling. He is tolerating grammar. He doesn't like the paper crafts, coloring, or the Draw Your World.
- Mei loves just about everything. That is just her nature.
- They both loved science.
- They are both overwhelmed by all the reading I am doing.
- Mark is practicing his vowels sounds, while he plays the phonics games with Mei. Good deal! It will help his spelling!
- It was a really good week and we did almost everything I had planned.
Changes we are making:
- I tried going to the gym before the kids and dh were up and that made things work out better. They were up when I got home and ate breakfast while I showered. I am going to do this for sure 2 days a week. I don't want to give up my Yoga classes on Mon/Wed yet, but I may.
- Mark will work on Spanish while I am at Yoga. It is computer based, so he doesn't need me for it.
- I need to move some of Mark's LA so he has less on Mondays.
- I need to find activities that Mei can do when she is done. Chores or educational DVDs sound good - although the DVDs will distract Mark even though he claims they are annoying.
- I need to break up the reading. We enjoy reading just a page or two in a book, but 4 books in a row is too much. I also got out the Legos for them to play with one day while I read. That really seemed to help. I guess we will keep them downstairs.
- I guess I save Draw Your World for when we repeat Children Around the World with just Mei 3 years from now or so. I guess I can also try to sell the coloring books I got for Mark to use.
- So we are not adding the History of US - a recommended extra for Mark. However, I decided I will read the assignments in my spare time. If I come across anything interesting, I will share it with them.
- I need to add more Spanish time and more book reading for Mark.
Pictures of our week! Doing LA on mom&dad's bed. B is for Brother. Mei loves playing the phonics games. Mark joined in. T is for Tickle!!! Doing chores! Our Children Around the World Map came, along with the figures to put on it. We are ready now!
We are on week 21 and we are out of the woods! We are onto the Polar Regions next!
We whizzed through LA this week and finished it all by Wednesday. See below for a picture of our ever growing Letter Wall. We also finished all of the Animal Worlds reading early, too. I started reading aloud the chapter books again. We are reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. So far Mei is not too interested in it. In math, we started subtraction. She seems to get it!
We are participating in two valentine exchanges - Winter Promise families and HSFCC (home schoolers with adopted Chinese children). It was challenging for her to write out the many valentines, but it has been great fun to receive them! Mei especially enjoyed receiving the one from the WP family in China. BTW - it only costs 84 cents to mail a valentine to China.
I attended an International Festival at Mark's school this week. Since they will be teaching Mandarin there next year, they recently got a bunch of books about China. I enjoyed looking at them and can't wait to see if our library has them! I did get some questions about Mei going to school there next year. I didn't tell them that Mark was not coming back.
As I was driving home, I started questioning myself about our decision to continue homeschooling Mei and bringing Mark home. I was feeling guilty. But I knew it was not from God - since God has already affirmed our decision to home school. I guess that is part of being a home schooler - defending your decision - even if it just to yourself. Funny, I expected to have to defend our decision to adopt internationally - but that hasn't been challenged as much as I anticipated. I can see that the home schooling decision will be challenged more.
Hope you have a great week!
Mei sorting the mail to find those valentines!
Mei showing the valentines received in today's mail.
Our letter wall - from WP Pre-K/K Basic LA and Animal Worlds - obviously we are not currently using the desk for school work
Well, Mei begged to do more LA this week! She loves worksheets and completed all this week's work in about 2 days. So we played a game where I hid the letter cards near objects that started with that letter. She had to name the object and make the letter sound when she found it. Then she hid the cards for me to find. Turns out we have a lot more B things in our house, than F and A things! We will have to try more of the phonics games since she enjoyed this one so much.
Mei is still loving math. It is what she chooses to do first every day. She is starting to understand how numbers work and almost has the days of week down.
Mei's interest in AW seems to be fading. I hope this week to include more hands-on activities besides the crafts. I think if we were doing more experiment type things she would like it more.
If you have a moment, please read my previous post about my 3 top priorities.
Mei busy at math. Our school area is this desk between my family room and kitchen area. A storage cabinet in the family room holds our supplies. That is her play kitchen on the far side of the desk.
Mei and I made Barney the Butterfly - mine is the one with purple antennae! Mei took this picture of me.
Doing LA on mom&dad's bed.
B is for Brother. Mei loves playing the phonics games. Mark joined in.
T is for Tickle!!!
Doing chores!
Our Children Around the World Map came, along with the figures to put on it. We are ready now!
