Family Day

We spent today with family that was in town. It was a nice day to get together and relax. Nothing very exciting has happened around here this weekend. DH had Friday off in addition to today, but he spent the day golfing with his work buddies. So it was pretty much a day like any other Friday. This weekend I have also been slowed by some sort of sinus attack that makes my energy level kind of come and go.

Saturday we did try to restart MB's reading lessons as she had requested the night before, but like before she became frustrated with herself after one mistake and shut down. So, after getting over my frustration I stepped back and thought about the situation and decided to try something new. I am still not going to "teach" reading right now. Instead I have given her the 100 Easy Lessons book and told her that it is hers to look through and that if she has any questions about how to sound something out, or what a word might be to come ask her daddy or I. I am also going to institute a 15 minute reading time for her each day, during which she has to go somewhere quiet and either read through that book or one of the other early readers. I am putting the decision making for this one thing into her hands. Other than that we are just going to continue doing what we are doing which includes read alouds, writing practice (copying well-known nursery rhymes) and math and geography worksheets that have easy-to-read directions. We will also do phonic and sight-word worksheets/games a couple if times a week for "fun."

Another change is that after completing the first few sections of the SOTW, up to talking about ice age man, which MB has been very interested in, I am going to skip around and move into ancient Africa. On Saturday she watched a documentary on tribes in Africa that still live a hunting and gathering life and then seeing our new National Geographic, she has been very interested in Africa. So I figured since they really correspond with the ice men in dates we are going to discuss Africa for as long as she wants. I figure we will fit her current interest in Environments and Habitat here as we will discuss the different zones in Africa and how it affected the african tribes in coming slowly to the agrian culture, and why there are still tribes that exist today living an 'ancient' life. We can also talk about all the animals that live in Africa in the different environments. From Africa, we can move into the Fertile Crescent and Sumeria, moving on through until something else catches our eyes.

I have finished her Oregon Trip notebook which includes photos and brochures from all the different things that she did on the trip. I am hoping to also continue collecting from her the various stories of her trip from her to include in each activity.

That is pretty much the extent of our long weekend.

Peace,

Amy