Our first week of school has gone fairly well, though the first day made me want to run far, far away.

Math is going well.  One daughter needs more help and support than I'd like, but she'll likely come around once we get going.  Place value and renaming numbers is not her thing.

L. Arts might need some tweaking.  I'm not sure Rod and Staff is a good fit for Hannah and am thinking of using worksheets only next week.  She did that last year and it worked well.  Right now, remembering the directions seems to be more difficult than the material at hand!  I have Wynston Grammar downstairs and have always thought it would be a good fit for her.  I might have her copy a few correct examples from Rod and Staff as reinforcement while using the other as her main grammar program.  We'll see.  Sarah and Holly are all set for now. 

Voyages Bible - love the way the lessons give application for normal life.  Maybe the fact that it's designed for class use is a good thing in this case.

Latin - love, love, love Lively Latin for H. and H.  We've had a mini study in linguistics, history reinforcement, and basic grammar review in an interactive and engaging format.  (My good friends know those are my key words for describing materials that I like for our family).  Sarah's doing well with Latin for the Christian Trivium too.  I love the organization.  Both programs provide a lot more teaching than Latina Christiana, in my most humble opinion.  :)

Science - I have no idea what Sarah is doing as Rainbow is written directly to the student.  I know she's working through the rest of a chemistry unit she started last year.  Hannah and Holly (with tag along Abby) started learning about our planet this week.  Continental drift, tectonic plates, mantle, crust, core, etc... were all on the list of topics.  We still love our original set of Montessori task cards and all seemed to enjoy making a continent puzzle Tuesday morning.

Tapestry - Other than the fact that we're doing history on the floor in the guest room, this went very well.  Week one covered the Twilight of the Roman Era.   I read selections from The Story of the World and Famous Men from the Middle Ages.  Sarah outlined an encyclopedia article, did mapwork, posted on our timeline, read a bunch of books, and did a historical figure report on Constantine.  Hannah read an encyclopedia article and wrote a summary of it, did mapwork, read literature, and finished a vocab. sheet of words for King Arthur.  Holly looked through an encyclopedia article with me, colored and captioned a picture of Augustine, did mapwork, listened to a tape of King Arthur, and put pictures of several key figures in order for a cute timeline of the fall of Rome.  Of course, I loved how this reinforced and dovetailed with what the girls are learning in Latin.  There was much talk of the barbarians as we covered the Angles, Saxons, Vandals, Huns, Goths, etc...  I enjoyed hearing Hannah call us barbarians after making the connection between our English language and our Angle/Saxon heritage (something we covered in Latin). 

Music - I think my children are charming when they play for me.  :)

All in all, a pretty good week after a terribly rocky start.  The best part?  I still have plenty of time to just be.  We're done with all of our school except Sarah's violin and independent reading at 12:30 - love that!  I will miss teaching a full studio, but for this season of life it was a good decision.