Weekly Wrap-up

This week went by so fast! Monday daddy had the day off and we didn't have co-op, so we spent the day cleaning and organizing and playing games with the kids. Nothing too exciting, but the house needed it! 

Bear has been working hard on her reading lessons but she still doesn't want to share progress with anyone. She recently switched to hooked on phonics instead of OPGTR. I prefer the latter but she wasn't a fan of it. 

Monkey has surprised me by really liking history this year. We've never been very consistent with history, she's much more a STEM kid. We've changed our plans at least once every year, trying to find something that she can find even a bit of interest in. She started with state history this year thinking she would like that, but she found it very dry. So once again, we switched up history plans. For the third time we gave ancients a go, this time using History Odyssey. She's loving it! Twice this week she asked for history before science!! I'm hoping to get through ancients in a little under a year so we can complete the 4-year cycle in three years. I have my sights on years 7 & 8 of Build Your Library, so I'd like to finish our world history tour by 7th. We'll see how it goes, I don't want to rush it if she's enjoying the rabbit trails and extra readings. 

Bear's favorite subject is math. She usually does at least two days worth of what I have planned every day. We're using Singapore Essentials and I've heard that A is closer to a review of preschool level but B picks up a lot in difficulty. So I'm fine with her going so quickly through book A; we can slow down when she gets to book B and spend more time there. 

Monkey is still really loving spelling. I'm going to adjust our schedule so we hit it twice a week instead of just once. She's doing level 3 right now since she wasn't home last year to do it and we didn't want to skip any levels with this program (AAS), but I think she'd be happier at a higher level.

Engineering fun! She loves using the engino's to build something new each week to go along with our engineering lesson. We're finishing up our unit on wheels, axels, and inclined planes. I think we're moving on to pulley's next. 

In science we're learning about Newton's laws. Here she is testing to see what happens to the lego guy when we push the car under him with and without support behind his back, and running it into a wall. 

The big blue ball has been getting a lot of attention this week! She bounced on it through her entire math worksheet and still wanted to roll around on it during science. 

Taking a break to play some Lazer Maze while I worked with Bear. We have a lot of these solo-play thinking games. They're great for a bit of a break from seat work without getting out of thinking mode for school. 

Bear likes to play them, too. This one is Rush Hour. I will do a post soon with some of our favorite thinking games.

Bear enjoys having some computer time after she's finished her work with me. She's doing either Hooked on Phonics or ABCmouse here, I'm not sure which. All the paper scattered about is because cutting up paper is her favorite thing to do while I'm working with Monkey. We're still working on picking the bits back up!

Monkey is enjoying her new theater class! This week the class learned a skit that they're going to perform for the other classes at the halloween party in a couple of weeks. They played games and practiced one of the songs for their year end play. 

We went on a field trip with our co-op. The girls learned about energy sources, leaves, solar power, and explored some pond water for life!

We went for a hike to check out all the awesome fall colors!

And I'll end with this picture that demonstrates the difficulty I have getting Monkey to sit still for lessons! She really is my monkey :)