Sunday, May 30, 2010

Week 21 2010

We've fallen into our summer schedule starting this past week. The big girls got up in the mornings and knocked out their online lessons, language arts and math. They are still doing really well and seem to be enjoying the lessons. I've had Mary put aside her math program for the right now and just work on her multiplication facts. Too much frustration on her part because she understands the math concepts, but she just cannot remember her multiplication facts. She is using Timez Attack and extra worksheets from Math Mammoth.

The lessons are only taking the girls an hour or so to complete online, then there is generally a writing assignment for the day. I'm so over-the-top thrilled that the girls are actually writing!!

This week we also watched all three seasons of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" thanks to Netflix. A show we really enjoyed on cable, but never sot to see Season 3 because we had the cable disconnected. As far as children's cartoons go this has to rank up there as one of the best.

Mary has decided to write short stories and made a notebook to keep all her stories in. Again, can I just say how excited I am that they are writing!! This is her book and she has let me take a peak at one or two of the stories. Her spelling is much better than I expected, but it looks like we need to keep hammering in the capitalization rules. In addition to writing stories she has also thought it would be fun to make up Word Find puzzles for Katie and Emily. That has been interesting to see her work on those.

The 39 Clues: Book 7 has sent us on a mini-study of South Africa and Apartheid. Mary is currently reading "Journey to Jo'Burg" by Beverly Naidoo. And, this month's National Geographic had a very interesting article on South Africa and Apartheid since the World Cup will be beginning there next month. We found out that Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman will be available on June 15th...very interested in watching that movie together.

We've made it to the park a couple of days this week and Mary has spent a lot of time outside working on striking the soccer ball harder. She had try-outs this week for classic soccer. Mary made the team for our area but one of her weaknesses was striking. She has decided that she will work on that throughout the summer. We hung a net from the old, metal swing set and she has been practicing every evening when it cools down enough to go outside.

On Wednesday, we finally made it out strawberry picking. Were able to get a bucket of late season strawberries to enjoy this week/weekend. Yummy!


Not to leave all the other kids out of the report this week, but they are just doing what they always do. A lot of games and puzzles. Katie is probably spending too much time on the Bulld-A-Bear website, but is doing a lot of neat math games while she is playing. She is still reading through some of the Magic Treehouse series, but has slowed down a bit.


Robbie loves to put boxes over himself and pretend he is a robot, so Mary decided to make him his very own 'Robbie-Bot' suit. He and Emily are having a lot of fun with this.

Otherwise, nothing too exciting. This weekend DH is working a lot (got to figure out how to pay for soccer now) and the big girls are spending time at their friend's house. Mary also has a job this weekend taking care of neighbor's pets. It has been kind of quiet around here at times and I am trying to use that to do some much needed cleaning.

Peace,

Amy

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A family of six living and learning. You might catch us outside in the mud or working on crafts. We always seem to be on the go, come on and join us.