Weekly Report--10/8/11

I almost forgot that I wanted to start doing these again! Our weeks end on Saturday; we take Thursdays and Fridays off because those are DH's days off, and Saturdays are our "extra stuff" days (logic exercises, history and Latin tests, math games, etc.). So my Weekly Reports will usually be on Saturdays.

After I dumped all my frustration in this morning's blog post, I took a good look at the day's schedule and realized that we're not quite as far behind as I thought we are. I expected today to be a complete loss, but I forgot that Saturdays are relatively easy days anyway. And B turned out to be feeling a bit better today, so mean mama that I am, I made the girl work!

This week was our first week back to school for the 2011-2012 year. Thankfully we school year-round, so I'm not as under-the-gun as I might be otherwise! We had other firsts this week too: our first Latin lessons, our first week of formal work for J, and our first meeting of the Mother-Daughter Book Club (MDBC). Our first MDBC selection was A Little Princess, which B was sure she'd hate. Turns out she loves it as much as I did when I was her age! We read the first five chapters, then we went to Panera for an early morning breakfast to discuss it. B loved the grown-upness of it all and can't wait to do it again. She's even looking forward to the other books I picked out so far (Island of the Blue Dolphins, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William Mckinley, and Me, Elizabeth).

Latin was...interesting. There was a meltdown or two initially, but once we got the hang of the LfC style, things smoothed out. I think next week will go even better than this past week did.

J's liking her work. She re-memorized The Caterpillar from First Language Lessons, which she's quite proud of. And while FLL didn't work AT ALL for B at that age (she hated the repetition), J is thriving on it. She loves to do her handwriting workbook, though she's still struggling with forming her letters. And we've read three books together for the Mother-Daughter Read-Along Club (MDRAC)--I read a page and she reads a page, and when we finish, we add the book to her achievement list.

As for the rest--math, WWE, geography, etc.--we're cruising along. We're still not getting to all the subjects on our schedule (mainly science), but I'm tweaking in the hope that we'll begin fitting them in. I got some great advice on my favorite HSing board, so hopefully the changes will help :-)

On to a new week!

Behind already?!

Argh!!! I need one of the "banging head on wall" emoticons. We are already behind, and it's only (for us) Day 6 of the dratted school year. Day 1 was a beautiful day. On Day 2, J got sick--AGAIN! B was acting sick too, and melted down when I tried to do school work with her, so I scrapped the day figuring we were all going to get hit. Turns out B was not sick; she was just not prepared to do schoolwork when "Avatar: The Last Airbender" was on the TV upstairs. So on Day 3, we had a little talk about it, and school went on as planned. Even J, who had just a 24-hour bug, asked to do her schoolwork again. Lots of work (but still not all of it--that's a whole other blog post) got done over the next few days. We even did some catch-up work on Thursday, which is supposed to be an off day. However...on Friday, B woke up miserable and mopey, and I thought it was just because we had co-op that day. She ended up at Mimi and Bubba's house for the day, and by 5:00, it was apparent that the 24-hour bug had finally reached her. Poor kid still had a temp of 101.4, even with 300 milligrams of ibuprofen in her!

So here we are on Day 6, with a full slate of work to do, and I have a sick kid who's doubly miserable because two of her favorite cousins are in town visiting, and she's too sick to go over and play :-( I'm miserable because we're falling behind again. J, our little thumb-sucking, germ-harboring patient zero, is happy though, because she has dance today AND she's well enough to go visiting with my mom.

Vitamins and hand sanitizer for all *sigh*

First official day of the 2011-2012 school year

Yes, we're late. Very late, in fact. We were traveling at the end of the summer, and while we did some "beach school" in North Carolina, we didn't plant to start our school year until the third week of September. Then I got sick. Then both kids got sick. Then Dennis got sick. The house was was a wreck from all the sickness. Then our school year social schedule launched (as well as the new co-op we're a part of this year)...and, well, needless to say, we're getting a later start than I'd really planned! But we're back as of today, and the train is roaring full speed ahead.

J was totally gung-ho to get back to schoolwork today and kept asking me for more. We didn't get all her work done, but we got FLL, Funnix, and handwriting done.

B was less than totally gung-ho, but she plugged away diligently, and we got math, WWE, geography, and GWG done. Miraculously, we also did our first-ever Latin lesson! It was really interesting and kind of fun--at least for me, given my background with Spanish and (some) Italian. B was a little overwhelmed by the whole thing, but she really enjoyed seeing the connection between Latin and many of the words we use every day, and she liked hearing me connect Spanish and Italian words to the Latin words as well.

Due to a glitch in my online order, my Dynamic Literacy student books still haven't arrived, so we'll have to start that tomorrow. I also didn't manage to get science scheduled in, so we'll start that tomorrow too. Thankfully, we tend to school year-round to make our schedules a bit more flexible, so even with our late start, we should still be able to wrap fourth grade up in a reasonable amount of time (i.e., in time to start fifth grade!).

In other news, J is really enjoying both her dance and singing classes, and the co-op is going well. We're eager to get going on a bunch of fun outings we've booked via Groupon and Living Social (Please Touch Museum, the much-loved Bronx Zoo, etc.), we have an upcoming trip to the excellent Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, and the homeschool days at the Adventure Aquarium are coming. And we have some of our favorite family members arriving in town this week.

I'm already exhausted!