A Week, Briefly (Jan 3, 2022)

 This week the pics are all about Lola.

 

This is what she did instead of chores one morning.  She's a brand-new 7 year old, and the drawing she did is amazing!  Done with her non-dominant hand!!!  I couldn't even be (too) annoyed that she'd been ignoring her chores.  Her Northern Finch is hanging on our gallery wall, and I hope she'll do more sketches like this!

She did it!  She finished the entire book!  She's faking stoicism here, but she was super proud of herself, and all of us are proud of her!  She's now working on Language Lessons for a Living Education 1 in order to review and build on the skills she's worked on here.

I excused her from all written work seeing as it's her writing hand that's in a cast, but she loves her math games and begged to play a few of them this week.  She's becoming more and more adept at using her left hand.

 In non-Lola-related news, we kept losing our read alouds.

We were working on Tales from Ancient Egypt when Beowulf had a bad episode and tore up the book.  At least we were mostly finished with it.

We moved on to Landmark's Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt and had only gotten through Menes with a start on Khufu/Cheops when someone left it on the floor where Sugar Bear found it.  She picked it up and thought the picture of the golden sarcophagus was hilarious.  She carried it with her through all of her toddler wanderings, and now we cannot find it . . . not even after several serious clean-up routines.

We've now made a start on The Golden Goblet.

In addition, we were reading Mr. Revere and I during out lunchtime read aloud sessions, but it disappeared and was unfindable one day.  I looked at the shelf, realized we'd forgotten to read A Lion to Guard Us when we were studying early American colonial history, and decided we'd jump back in time a bit.

Suddenly, Mr. Revere and I appeared on my bedside table (according to Little Princess, I put it there, and I believe her), so now we're hopscotching through history by reading a chapter of each.  It was fun to put up a timeline for the kids with on which I counted generations that would have passed between the two books in order to give a bit of historical perspective.

Belle is making progress at working toward her goal of attending SVU this fall.

And this fun email appeared!

This was the easy part.

Now she has to find enough financial aid in order to cover the costs.  This is not an inexpensive school, and a Pell grant is only going to cover the barest beginnings of her needs.  I've assigned her 20 hours a week of scholarship research and filling-out of applications.  I hope that her acceptance is the boost she needs to do what it takes to get to her dream school this fall.

She got an "A" in her speech class, and she's finally registered for college algebra this term.  That class begins early next week, I believe.

We completed our first week of a (crazy expensive) preschool program I invested in when we thought we were adding another preschooler to our schedule.  Now, not only is she not joining us, but Little Mr Frog and Nugget are only going to be with us 1 day each week.  

I purchased it after Nature Angel and Little Princess requested more structure in the babies' days, and after I'd studied several more cost-efficient options.  In the end, the amount of energy we'd have to put into the more cost-efficient options was too much.  The babies' daycare fees cover the cost of the program (even if my income is seriously reduced), but there were no more hours in the day and no more energy to be found in any of us. The expensive option was the clear winner.

It. Is. So. Much. Fun!

Little Princess is in charge of the music/dramatic play component.

Nature Angel runs circle time.

I supervise art and critical thinking activities.

There is a tie for my favorite two moments of the week.

 

One activity was beating "drums" made of bowls and spoons along with a drumming song on the included CD.  The kids gloried in the noise they made!! 

The other was when The Munchkin and I were doing a pre-math activity together.  Ladybug was at the table doing some of her math and I invited The Munchkin to join her and "do math, too."  

He was so thrilled and proud.

He matched his colors, and he recreated patterns, and the whole while he said, "I do math!  I do my math!  I doing math!"

As for the rest of the homeschool stuff, we're putting one foot in front of the other, getting assignments done one page at a time.

Ladybug is working hard to memorize her times tables.

Mr. Man is studying long division and poetry.

Brother is slowly grasping place value in the thousands and millions.

Beowulf is learning about spelling blends in single syllable words.

Lola  . . . she's featured above.

Baymax is investigating fractions and C-V-C-e words.

Nature Angel is dedicated to doing good school work.

Little Princess needs constant reminders to do any school at all.

 

Pixie auditioned for and made the Collegiate Dancers team!  She'll be on the World team performing in the Bollywood and Afro-Caribbean numbers.  

And I'm 10 minutes late in getting the kids up for the day, so that's all for now!