Aug. 11, 2007 - Back to School!
We officially started back to full days of school on July 31st. We are using our new schedule using the Robinson Curriculum method with the AO booklist for now. I have so many of the AO books, and I'm having a hard time finding books from the RC list...and I"m not so gung ho on printing and binding all the books. We made it through our first full week, I think we only need a few minor adjustments.
We did take Friday Aug 3rd off to go up to the river. It's just over an hour drive to the trailer, so we listened to the Magicians Nephew on the drive up and back. We got there around 3:00 and Grandma and Crapaw were already there. We played in the river a bit, and prepared dinner....which ended up taking forever to cook! I don't think we ate until nearly 8:00! After dinner we got ready for bed and played a game of Who-nu and it was lights out early for us that night! Saturday, Aunt Debbie, Marsha, Grannie and Gramps came up in the morning. We played in the river and looked for crawdad's under rocks, the boys went fishing a couple times and caught 3-4 fish each, Libby loved catching baby frogs on the bank and playing with them in the river. We had a wienie roast at lunchtime, and gramps and aunt debbie played a game of horse shoes. 
Libby sittin pretty in the river!
Parker reels in a little perch...mama got it off the hook for him...I was surprised I was able to!
Perry reeled in a big one...he also caught a 2lb catfish the night before! The boys had a great time fishing!
After lunch, we celebrated Grannie's birthday and had cake. Then, we drove about 2 miles up river and floated on tubes and rafts back to the trailer. Finally it was time to get everything cleaned up and head back home Saturday evening.
Monday it was back to School again! We had a great week!
Libby finished her first level of hooked on phonics on August 7th, and is now on to level 2 and very excited! She has spent this week learning new sound combinations. CH, SH, TH are still giving her a little trouble so we will continue to practice them before we start the workbook. She will have it in no time!She has starting to pick up on her reading really quickly lately. We read a small excerpt from the bible each day, A chapter or 2 from the Burgess Bird Book, and maybe a short book that she picks out from the shelf. It usually measures out to 45 minutes of read aloud time. Soon she will be buddy reading with me, I can't wait! On Friday (Aug 10th) she finished her Math U See Primer. We didn't quite get it finished last year, and have been working through it a little bit over the summer. We hit it full speed ahead once we started school. She has been breezing through it! Monday she will start Alpha, and continue to listen the Math U See Skip counting CD each day till it is ingrained in her brain!
The boys are doing 2 hours of reading, 1½ hours of math lessons/drills, 1 hour of copywork, ½hour of vocabulary lessons. We have an hour each day that I hope to use for various activities, like going to the park, a trip to the library, or craft times. the boys read from their bible (1 chapter a day) and a literature selection in the morning. In the afternoon they read either a Geography, Biography, Science or History book. Perry finished reading the Wind in the Willows, and has decided to start reading Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan next. He's really enjoyed reading it the few times we have started it, but we never made it all the way through, but our new way of reading seems to be working much better! He's reading It couldn't just happen by Lawrence Richards in the afternoon. Parker has been reading shorter books...so he's read Joan of Arc by Joan Stanley, George Washington by D'Aulaire, and he just finished Tree in the Trail by Holling and Doctor Dolittle. He is starting Mr. Poppers Penquins and The Burgess Bird book, this one will take a while to read through as it is a much longer read!
I'm still working on our schedule to work out the kinks, but all in all I think we have had a great first week of school!
|
