Weekly Wrap-Up

Thanks to Kris at weird unsocialized homeschoolers for hosting a weekly wrap-up. This is my first time doing one of these so I hope its ok. Here's how our week has gone.

It's been a fairly good week here. Instead of planning a week at a time as I usually do I decided to plan a day at a time but I knew where I wanted to be at the end of the week. This was good in that if we didn't get all the work I had planned for one day done we could easily add it to the next day without messing up my weekly planner. I am a perfectionist in that way I am afraid and feel awful if by the end of the week we don't get every little thing done. The schedule takes over and I start to feel stressed that we aren't going to get everything done but this week I have decided that the one subject that has to be done each week is History as we are following History Odyssey Level 1 Ancients and I really want to do at least one lesson a week to be done by May. As it happens history is the subject that we didn't really get done but I am not too worried as it is the kids favourite subject and they can do it this afternoon.

Monday was by far our best day of the week for getting work completed. The kids were really focussed and we got lots done. We have only just had the internet put in at home and the kids are really enjoying being able to look stuff up instantly on the web so I wanted to do some interactive learning to inject some more fun into our homeschool which I feel has been lacking a little this past couple of weeks.

Art is the subject I hate most but the kids love. I can't draw for toffee and, thanks to a horrible teacher at high school who ruined any confidence I had in the subject, I hated Art. Usually dh will do it with them on a Wednesday afternoon but I had found a great site for called Kinder Art over the weekend. I signed up for their newsletter and on monday morning waiting for me in my inbox was some great ideas and lesson plans for Art.

Inspired by the lesson plan's I chose one based on the work of an artist called Giuseppe Archimboldo who created portraits using fruit and vegetables. I though it was really interesting and as for science this week I had planned on doing about a healthy diet and eating lots of fruit and veg I thought it would be a marvellous idea to do our own fruit and vegetable portraits as suggested in the lesson plan.

Here are the results:







J's fruit and veg man: Head and hair is a Pineapple; Carrots for his Ears; Orange slices for Eyes; Chilli Peppers for Spiky Eyebrows; Strawberry for a Nose; Chilli Pepper for Lips; Pomegranate Seeds for his Teeth; Broccolli for his Beard.

E's fruit and veg man: Cantaloupe Melon for his Head; Chilli Peppers for its Spiky Hair; Strawberries for his ears; Apples for his Eyes; Tomato slices for Eyebrows; Orange slices for his Cheeks; Bunch of Grapes for his Nose; Cherries for his Moustache; Banana for his mouth.

They both really enjoyed doing the pictures and I was really pleased with the results and proud of myself too for managing to teach art on my own. Yippee!!!!

One of the things that has really helped us do better this week is we have started First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind Level 3 and also Writing With Ease. I love these so much as do the kids and can't believe I never thought to try FLL earlier. I am currently using samples of both but will definitely be placing an order for them both. It has improved their handwriting so much already. At the start of the week J's handwriting was joined up, small and you struggled to read it. He had been taught joined up as soon as he started school in Kindergarten and we had just continued with him carrying on. By Friday it was printed instead of joined up, properly spaced between words and far neater and easier to read. I have struggled in the past with how slow his writing seemed but he has really picked up speed since we dumped the joined up (cursive) writing and I have been thinking about what is more important – that he write cursive and it be unreadable or that he print his words and I or anyone else can read them. We will almost certainly come back to cursive at some point but for now we will go with print and maybe next year I will look for a good cursive handwriting program for them both. If you have any suggestions for one I'd love to hear from you.

I have also found that the days we used FLL we were much more focussed and seemed to complete more work. I think it was because we were sat round the dining table together with no distractions and it helped me to focus too having to be so involved in it as opposed to telling them what to do and letting them get on with their workbook once they understood what to do whilst I did the laundry or washing up. We didn't do any FLL or WWE on Friday and we didn't get as much done then so next week I am going to make a huge effort to sit with the kids the whole time they are doing school and I think they work quicker then too as I am there to stop any distractions and help them focus on what they are doing.

Hopefully next week will be better still than this week. Have a great weekend!

Emma