A Week, Briefly (In Which We Have Some Unmentionable Troubles)

This was a bad week.

Some good things happened.

Like having a picnic dinner on the deck one night

But it was a bad week.

I don't know how to write both honestly and appropriately about what happened, so that will have to suffice for now.

The little kids played in the mud every day.  That was good for them.  They made up long, highly-imaginative stories that helped them develop their brains.  They worked the mud with their hands, and they hauled and carried buckets of mud and water with their whole bodies.

I call that good preschool.

Mister Man finished reading Little House in the Big Woods--all by himself.  I'm reading it aloud to him and Ladybug, but he got interested and picked the book up one day during quiet hour.  For a week I hardly saw it out of his hands.  He read and narrated the chapters to me day in and day out until he'd suddenly read the whole thing.

Now he's reading Farmer Boy.

Ladybug's school got interrupted by the troubling events of the week.  I feel badly because she loves learning.

Little Princess completed just over a week's worth of math lessons, completed some spelling/grammar lessons, and typed up the story she dictated to me last week.  She's taking very seriously the completion of her 7-year-old challenge.  She sits with my phone reading/listening to the Book of Mormon for a good half hour every morning.

Nature Angel completed 3 math lessons (one day she was sick and forgot to do math, and we didn't do school on Friday), 4 language arts lessons, and 1 art lesson involving making her own color wheel for primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.

Belle and I had a talk about her academic talent that is not being appropriately challenged.  She agreed to double up on science and start a Latin course.  She's working beautifully, and isn't even breaking a sweat.  I don't want to overwhelm her, but I suspect she needs even more challenging work.  I'll just watch for a while.  She says the science is fun, and the Latin is interesting.  She also does daily Math lessons, literature reading/narrations, scripture study, and creative writing in addition to teaching math to Mister Man and participating in family lessons.

Super Star dragged this week due to being heavily affected by the cold that has been working its way through the family.  She still completed 6 science lessons, 4 math lessons, 4 days of literature/narrations, family lessons, a week's worth of Home Economics, and some creative writing.  She's dreamed for a long time of becoming an icthyologist, but this week she researched what it really takes to become one.

It isn't a family-friendly sort of dream.  I've challenged her to think outside the box and imagine ways to study sharks without having to pay for a phD or live on a research boat for the rest of her life.

Baymax is learning to brush his teeth.

 Pixie remains highly self-motivated.  She's writing, reading, photographing (most of the photos in this post are hers), doing algebra, drawing, thinking, organizing, choreographing, learning and practicing new photo-editing skills, cooking, helping, and generally grabbing life with both hands and reveling in it.

Rose Red talked with her Spanish teacher about her quiz grade last week.  It turns out that the whole class failed the exam, and the teacher told her not to worry about that grade.  Later in the week Rose Red and another student were lauded by the teacher as the only students in the class to correctly translate a brief assignment.  She had a true exam this week, and she feels confident she did well.  She remains less-than-committed to the rest of her school work, though.

We're 53% of the way through David Copperfield.  That Steerforth is a rogue!

The preschool book of the week was Abiyoyo.

We had morning meeting 5 out of 5 days, and we're working on the second paragraph of The Living Christ.  

We only had 2 symposiums--one history lesson about Nero and one music appreciation lesson about Bach and Aaron Copeland (odd combination, I know, but it was interesting nonetheless).

Nature Angel and Little Princess

(Linking here)