Ninth (again) Week of School Report

We actually are on week 11 or something like that, but because of sickness we only had a few days of school the 9th and 10th week, so I decided this was week 9.
First, Ram did this post on his blog. I asked him who Aldus Huxley was. He told me that was like asking who C.S. Lewis was. Blog readers-do you know who Aldus Huxley was? Am I the only culturally illiterate one here? I'm thinking that Ram is more knowledgeable about stuff like this.

I must say that after 9 weeks, I think we are doing well where I would like Lamb 1 to be in kindergarten. I've never taught kindergarten before or homeschooled before and we've had a lot of sickness this fall. Lamb 2 is also doing remarkably well for only 3 years old-picking up most of what Lamb 1 is learning. Lamb 3 is also listening to most of our homeschool time. When we read aloud he has to sit right in the middle and pushes until he gets in just the right spot to see the pictures and listen. Lamb 1 and 2 don't like to share Mama's lap for this so it makes quite a scene until we are all situated so that everyone is happy. Here's what we accomplished this week.
Math: We finished lesson 5 and are almost done with lesson 6. Lesson 6 has them write their numbers to 100 and also write counting by 10s. When I taught Saxon first and second grade math as a teacher, they rarely had to write all the numbers up to 100 and never had to write it for a whole week. So it impresses me that he is doing this in kindergarten. At the first couple lessons this week, I was getting so frustrated with working with Lamb 1. He started daydreaming or worried about his brothers doing something else or started doodling on other parts of the paper...After 2 days of frustration, I decided to leave the math worksheet out on his desk so when he woke up that was the first thing he saw. Our morning routine is get up and go to the bathroom, put on clean underwear, have one piece of Halloween candy, and then play quietly until Ram and Ewe get up and get breakfast for everyone. After I put the worksheet out the night before, Lamb 1 got up and wrote his numbers to 100 before I even woke up. He saved some of the review parts for after I got up, but it saved a lot of time and especially frustration on MY part this way. I plan to continue this for the remaining lessons that he writes to 100. I know in MUS you can go on without doing all the worksheets if they get the concept. Lamb 1 CAN write his numbers to 100. I think the daily practice is good for him though.
Handwriting: We skipped around this week, wrote Bb and November and Happy Thanksgiving. I need to plan to get back to letters of the alphabet to be sure he really knows how to correctly write all the letters.
Reading: We skipped Five in a Row this week because I want to spend more time on quilts from The Rag Coat. We will skip it again this week with Thanksgiving. Then we'll spend the week after Thanksgiving finishing The Rag Coat and begin a new book the second week of December. We read several My Book House stories. One was the story of the turtle who could not stop talking. The geese offered to give him a ride if he held on to a stick and warned him he could not talk. Of course he was tempted and talked and fell to the ground. Afterwards I asked the Lambs what they thought of that story. I was concerned they might be worried about the turtle falling. Lamb 1 answered, "Good story." I guess I don't need to be concerned about stories like that! We began memorizing Psalm 23 and are more than 1/2 way through. I used a picture book by Gennady Spirin for this. Lamb 1 and 2 are both doing very well memorizing this. We read some other poems. We read some books about Thanksgiving and books about the body like "Why Do We Sleep?"
Phonics: We finished all the letters of the alphabet in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Lamb 1 begged to do just a few more lessons. At this point last year (the first time through TOPGtTR) after a few of the beginning reading lessons, Lamb 1 hit a brick wall. We took the summer off and started over this fall. This time he has a much better base of the vowel and consonant sounds. We went on to the first reading lesson and he couldn't help himself to peek at the next lessons. It begins with reading "an" and then "at" and then words that rhyme with an and at. Lamb 1 easily read all those words and begged for more. I think we are very close to it being too difficult for Lamb 2 now, but he knows his vowels and consonants well and he might surprise me. The Lambs recite their vowels and consonants before they go to sleep-it must be fun to say the rhymes! This is exciting to me that Lamb 1 is doing so well this time. I'm also glad that we finished (and learned well this time) the vowels and consonants after one quarter of school.
Religion: For Bible stories we have been using the CPH Sunday School posters. My dad has bought us all the sets so far. We just realized the most recent set was a repeat of previous ones. Anyway, this week we completed and reviewed the first set of posters-what would be done in one quarter of Sunday School. I did it this way so they would have different lessons in homeschool than they have in Sunday School. Because of sickness we went very slow and in our schedule if we run out of time, Bible story is usually the first that doesn't get done. We still finished the first set of posters this quarter of school. We reviewed the previous lessons every time so the Lambs know the stories of creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Jacob, etc. well. We began Zechariah this week too.
I found out that the hymn for Thanksgiving that I chose was not one that Ram picked for Thanksgiving at our churches. Because of miscommunication (I like to tell him one hymn to pick that I want the Lambs to learn), I didn't work on any hymns with the Lambs this week. Hopefully they won't notice that we don't sing the hymn we began earlier this month at church. I will pick an Advent hymn and we'll begin learning that soon. We'll work on a Thanksgiving hymn next year.
We fit in catechism every day this week. I found it works well to play the Sing the Faith CD while we drive-to haircuts and to pick up our babysitter etc. We worked on the 6th commandment this week. Our memory verse for Sunday School was Psalm 86:6.
For several months we have had 4 table prayers posted (from the catechism) and Lamb 1 and 2 take turns picking one at meals. They like to pick the longest one best! But sometimes they pick another one. Lamb 1 showed that he knew "Lord God heavenly Father, bless us and these Your gifts which we receive from Your bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." by heart. Not to be outdone, Lamb 2 then recited the same prayer by heart. We praised them. This is significant to me because they can't read yet, but we continued to recite one of those 4 prayers daily. Ram and I were the only ones to say it at the beginning and they joined in a little as they learned them. We continued and because we were working on 4 prayers, it took a few months, but they learned it from JUST reciting them daily. We didn't "work" on memorizing them.
Latin: We did lesson 5 and I've "caught" the Lambs reciting Latin on their own at other times of the day too.
Music: We've been listening to classical music more often, especially during tea time. I hope to do more with music (begin learning to read music notes) in January.
Art: The only art we did this week was painting at ECFE.

This became a long post. Whew! It just shows that we did A LOT in homeschool this week. We also fit in a lot of extra activities. On Tuesday the Lambs got haircuts and we had ECFE. The ECFE theme was the 5 Senses. On Wednesday our babysitter came and it was nice enough to go to the park for a long time. On Thursday, Ram took the Lambs to the farm to get eggs. On Friday the Lambs chose a prize from the bank (hooray for small town banks!) for their deposits in their savings account. Lamb 1 has been playing lots of Legos with his new prize.
I did quite a bit of cleaning this week too. I still have a lot left to do before Ram's parents get here on Tuesday. I will be busy after the Lambs go to bed tonight and tomorrow. I still have more cleaning and lots of baking that I want to do. I am still recovering from being sick-I was weak for a long time after this round of the flu. But it is amazing to me when I just work a little every day, how much I can accomplish. It has definitely been slow and steady cleaning this time. It took me a few days but I did clean off my dining room table so we can eat there. It was a big mountain of paperwork and broken toys etc. It is depressing to vacuum with all the mud that is being brought in from the city sewer project. I also had to clean the bathrooms and kitchen well after all our sickness. I also cleaned up the basement-many toys all over and junk to throw out too.
I don't know how much school we will accomplish this week with Ram's parents visiting and Thanksgiving, but we'll try to fit in at least a little this week!