A Week, Briefly (11/5/18)

We took two full days off school this week to prepare for our two big shows . . . one of which was cancelled because of the first snow!

But we did hold Morning Meeting every morning.
We listened to The Book of Mormon every morning.
The teens and I read an additional 100 pages of The Grapes of Wrath.
We had a proper Symposium session 2 days this week.
The teens finished their art projects for Unit 4 of The Good and the Beautiful:

I've forgotten whose is whose, and they are not "great works," but they took hours and hours to do because they walked through literally dozens of layers of painting to get these gloomy landscapes captured to the best of their abilities.  This project was copying someone else's art.

The second art project was a flower study--rendered as the student saw fit.  This one is Super Star's.

I'm 90% sure this is Belle's landscape

Pixie's flower study

And Belle's

Little Princess was inspired by her older sisters to paint, too.

For the littler ones, we managed an abbreviated form of Academy 4 days this week in which we skipped science, shortened history lessons, and focused on poetry and literature.

Pixie and I worked feverishly on tutus and hair pieces for her 13 ballerinas that were to dance in the co-op showcase (Baymax and Lola add 2 to her numbers, but they were going to wear costumes we already owned) that was cancelled literally hours before it was to happen.

C'est la vie.

Now we are ready for next semester.

I am increasingly displeased with our Shiller materials.  In a single day I found what I consider to be intolerable mistakes in a math program:

One ought to hire editors to catch such mistakes!

These are harder to see in a photo, but the title of the lesson is "ADDITION TO 4" but the problems included are subtraction. Then the first set of instructions are so garbled as to be impossible to follow, and the second set are clearly instructions for subtraction.  I will add that though the student is being taught to add up to 4 for the first time, the lesson prior and the lesson following include drills up to 7.

 I will be contacting the company ASAP.

I am grateful that my small ones have good warm clothing and have been taught to play out-of-doors in all kinds of weather.  Neither freezing temperatures, nor slushy snow have kept them inside--which means they are eating and sleeping well, and I am less crazy than I am when they are arguing over Legos or throwing blocks.

But once in a while it is nice to play inside, and they pulled out our fraction pizzas and played pizzeria for a long time one morning.

I couldn't resist including pictures of my 3 preschoolers hard at work:

And lastly, our first show was much better than we thought it would be.  We had such an appreciative audience, and moms and kids really worked with synergy to produce an experience greater than the sum of its parts.

Much thanks to our beloved director who manages to manage us all and take photos from the wings, too!

Opening number to "Barn Dance"--Pixie choreographed and taught this one to all 35 dancers.  Here the littles are weaving in and out of a circle made by the big kids.  It is incredibly cool in real life.

My littles dance "Getting to Know You."

These are my medium kids dancing to "Cooties."

The oldest kids dance to "Dancing Cheek to Cheek."

Pixie's class dances to "Hard Knock Life."

These are the oldest kids again . . . I can't remember the name of this number, but I though the jump looked so cool!

Pixie's class again--dancing to "The Lonely Goatherd."

My littles sing and dance to "Tomorrow."

The two oldest classes combine for "One."

And this closing number to "From Now On" is simply amazing.  Pixie choreographed it.  It knocks my socks off every time I see it.

Finally, Pixie with her cute class just before "All That Jazz."

There are lots more numbers, but there's another show next week, so there will be more pictures to include then.


This morning's high is 17 degrees. 

I wonder how much time the kids will play outside . . . maybe I need to pull out the fraction pizzas again!