A Peek at our Week

I thought some of you might enjoy seeing a bit about our school week. There is never a dull moment!

Monday
Every morning we're home we do "calendar time." This involves adding today's date to the calendar, talking about yesterday, today, and tomorrow, learning to read and learn the days of the week and months of the year. We also talk about the weather and season. I've also added a virtue of the week (this week's was orderliness) and Bible heroes of the week (Adam and Eve). Our Bible memory verse of the week is I John 1:9 "God is faithful and just."

Next, Justin and I read our book of the week: Madeline. Since most of our activities for the week are based on our book, Justin and I next made French bread (the story of Madeline takes place in Paris, France). In between kneading and rising times, we worked on handwriting, 'teen numbers, and learning to read and write some of the color words. We also worked on a timeline of Justin's life along with our family history as part of the introduction to his history book.

Justin kneading the French bread dough

 Tuesdays and Wednesdays are our out-of-the-house days. First we go to his friend Tiernan's house for some combined activities. We studied a little bit about the digestive system and internal organs (Madeline has her appendix out in the story).

I had forgotten to bring clean clothes for Justin (his and Tiernan's favorite thing to do in their free time involves dirt and lots of water), so we sent the boys outside with strict instructions to keep their clothes clean and dry because we had to go to pottery at school afterwards. We made quiche for lunch (to go with our French Madeline theme) and looked outside to check on the boys. What we saw was their clothes clean and dry heaped by the back door. They were drenched under their hose shower in nothing but their underwear!

What we meant: don't use the water! What they heard: don't get your clothes wet!

 Pottery went great. Justin absolutely loves it. He made two more little pinch pots, a coil pot, and an apatosaurus dinosaur.

Wednesday morning we again went to Tiernan's house. We worked with dividing and multiplying within a group of 12 (corresponding to the 12 girls in the Madeline story). This transitioned into pattern activities, which transitioned into pattern paint stamping, which transitioned into symmetry painting. The boys loved it all. Then we headed to the school campus again to meet with Justin's mentor teacher, attend story time, and go to science class (they are working on bottle rockets...more on that to come next week!).

A sample of one of Justin's symmetry paintings

Thursday, Dave spent the morning with Justin. They spent some time outside mortaring rock to our retaining wall project. Then Justin and Dave worked on learning the color word yellow and working with the number 14. They also had time to go shopping for bottle rocket supplies (again, stay tuned).

For the afternoon, Tiernan came over and we had crepes for lunch (continuing our French theme). The we set the boys up with an arcaeological dig in our garden. They had a blast digging for items of a past civilization!

In the midst of an archaeological dig with Tiernan and his brother, Cian

Using a brush to gently clean off a historic find

After the dig, we turned them loose with the hose. This is the sight that greeted us when we next looked out the window:

You can't really tell from the picture, but Justin's legs are so caked with dried mud it looked like he was wearing mud-colored leggings! They were out there for 3 hours playing in the mud.

Friday is Dave's day off, so we just do a little bit of school. We went through our calendar time activities and then went to work on some handwriting. Next we played a few reading games, and then we went on a family nature hike. We collected Autumn nature items and will do an art project with them soon. After we got home, Dave and Justin worked a bit more on his bottle rocket. It's coming along nicely!

And that's our week. Whew!