I have come to the place in my life where I yearn for the weekends. Weekends mean work, but it is work at home. Weekends mean I can stay home. Home! What a joyous sounding word!
As usual we had a busy week full of soccer, preschool and swimming. This week we didn't go for a family swim like we usually do. Instead, we spent the day at the farm of some homeschooling friends on Wed. This family owns a small acreage outside of town. This farm is very child-friendly. They have swings, trampoline, sand box, and forts. They also have free roaming chickens and ducks. It was very homestead-ish to eat our lunch outside with chickens waddling around. My children had a great time collecting the eggs. We even got to take a dozen home.
We had a weiner roast outside (they also have a fire pit.) The kids played outside in the hay loft complete with a play kitchen. There was also a fort out in the back pasture that they explored. We had such a great time.
This week was math week. Rocky finished his Level B math book and will move on to Level C next month when we get back to math. Mia is still working on her multiplication facts. We are working slowly on this so as not to overwhelm her. She is doing very well. We are up to the 6 times where I think we will sit for awhile as she is having difficulty with those pesky 6's.
I mentioned yesterday a game we played that helps with probability. It is called The Snail Race. I found it in the Family Math 2 book. i really like the Family Math series. They have some wonderful ideas for games and activities. Anyway, there are 12 snails in a line on the game board. They are numbered 1 to 12. At the beginning of the game each player guesses which snail will win the race. When it is your turn, you roll two die. You add the two numbers together. That number will be the snail that goes forward in the race. For ex. you roll a 4 and a 3. The answer is 7 so you put a counter on the proceeding circle that is on the path of No. 7. Even if your snail is not No. 7, you still have to put a bean on the next circle. The first snail to get to the finish line obviously wins. The child quickly learns, though, that you can't chose the No. 1 snail because there is no way that you will roll 1 with 2 die. They also learn that you don't have a good chance with No. 12 either as there is only one way to roll a 12 (two 6's.) Hence, they learn the strategy of probability. We really liked this game.
We are still sailing along with Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. This is a perfect spring book. I am reading Turn Around Hannalee by Patricia Beatty with Mia. This is a civil war story. Miss Opal's Auction by Susan Vizurraga, Feathers and Fools by Mem Fox and A Drop Around the World (a neat book about the water cycle ) by Barbara Shaw McKinney were the picture books that we read this week. For my reading I just finished The Simple Truth by David Baldaccio. It is a fluff book but I think it is a well-written fluff book. Mind you, the plot was pretty mindless but, for fluff, it was okay. I am trying to figure out what I want to read next. I am reading a mystery book by Susan Wittig Albert but I don't think I can finish it. This just isn't capturing my attention or interest.
That just about sums up our week. Next week we are starting a three week block on Canadian History. This is where being a curriculum junkie comes in handy. I have enough resources to fill in three weeks on our country's history. I am looking forward to this next week.