Week 10 !!!!

I title this week the "expensive" week. We started out with a trip to the doctor on Monday for Mary. Somewhere she had managed to find an early batch of poison ivy and breakout on her face and neck. So, we spent $100 at the doctor for a $5 prescription of pregnizone. Within 24 hours she felt sooo much better.

Then, there was the eye doctor trip on Wednesday for Mary, Katie and myself. Since they inherited my farsightedness, reading glasses were needed all around. I was way overdue for a new prescription. I couldn't re-use Mary's glasses because they were too small for her face. I won't even say how much we spent on Wednesday.

In between we did our best do schoolwork.

~ Using Webster's Blueback Speller for phonics/spelling and reading

Using this old-fashioned book and the whiteboard, Mary and Katie are learning to new word-attack skills in reading. I'm impressed by the improvement already in both of the girls' reading by the constant drill and repetition. Whatever else was going on we drilled every day this week.

~ Emily is continuing to use OPGTR for her phonics lessons. We are at lesson 46 and I have started breaking the lessons into smaller chunks for her, so it takes us about two days to do each lesson.

~ Katie began subtraction above ten this week. I'm glad that we took the extra week to drill her addition facts to 20 before starting this unit. It has been much less frustrating for her.

~ Mary is finishing her unit on measurements. This week she completed lessons on converting standard and metric lengths.

~ Katie completed two Language lessons in 'Primary Language Lessons' and two grammar lessons in her grammar workbook on proper nouns.

~ Mary completed two Language lessons in 'Intermediate Language Lessons' and two grammar lessons in her grammar workbook on plural possessives.

~ Emily completed two handwriting lessons in her new Getty-Dubay workbook B.

~ Mary and Katie both completed all 4 lessons for the week in their WWE workbooks.

~ We read about and watched a video on Mars for science. The girls also added a page to their notebook on Mars.

~ In history we read about and discussed 'Catherine the Great' and 'Steam Power'. Mary also completed Chapter 3 in 'The Story of the USA" on "The First President".

Because of all the running around this week, we did not get to any science projects or in-depth history reading. But, at least we covered the basics this week. Sometimes history and science just totally fall off the agenda.

~ Emily put together the world map puzzle several times (on her own) and we read a couple of more stories from South-east Asia.

~ Mary loved her new Mind Benders workbook so much that she did all 15 puzzles in the book in less than on hour. I'll need to drive into town again soon and pick up a couple more. I'm also thinking that I might try some of the 'Red Herring Mysteries'.

~ Robbie was just Robbie this week. We spent time cuddling and reading and he has wanted to play on PBS Kids online. He has really liked the games where he makes word families.

I'm thinking that we need some sort of break soon or a fun field trip day. I love that we have a routine and are finally sticking to it after 5 years of homeschooling, and I hate to take too many days off because it is so hard to get everybody back on track. But, everyone is showing signs of needing some time away. Public school Spring Break is only a couple weeks away, I just don't know if we can make it ;-).

Peace,

Amy