We finally managed to have a relatively quiet week at home and get caught up on some of our lessons. Science is the one course we end up lagging behind. We’ve been studying Archimedes and the ancient Greeks for two weeks now. We spent over an hour on just our science lab (water displacement and weight distribution) this week alone. This is the first year I’ve required them to keep an experiment journal and so it took a while to walk them through the process of scientific documentation. Even though it is proving to be time-consuming I think it will be beneficial to helping them understand their studies in the long run.
Our school day has been taking forever since we started back up full time…we haven’t finished up until four o’clock sometimes. I noticed we spent our time waiting for someone to catch-up or griping over less desirable subjects. This week I changed things up and we’ve been finishing up several hours earlier. This week I had everyone do the one subject they dislike the most first. For Oldest it is writing and for Middle Boy it is penmanship. I moved a few of the together subjects over to independent subjects and everyone was much more productive. Sparkles finished up so quickly that when she asked to start the typing program I told her “yes”. I spend so much time telling my crew “no”. For once, it felt nice to say “you bet” and show her how to use the program. Now, that everyone is working more independently I have more time for one-on-one guidance. We are all much happier. I do have to keep a checklist for each child to make sure everything gets done since our day isn’t quite so orderly but the chaotic…well…works for my little scholars. Structured chaos may be great for my crew but I had a hard time letting go of my lovely hourly planner.
The big event this week was the arrival of the new to us piano gifted from one of my brother-in-law’s (Thank-you!!). My husband and Oldest traveled about two hours to pick it up. Once they arrived home we had to call in several friends to help us get the heavy beast into the house. (Thank you friends!!) The crew loves their new piano! A local tuner stopped by earlier today and tuned it for us. The kids were fascinated and watched him work. Middle Boy finally got to see the inside of a piano!! I was simply grateful the instrument passed inspection. Some friends of our recently acquired a piano that wasn’t worth repairing and I was nervous the same would happen to us…but it didn’t.
This week we went to the local library to see Jason Lindsey of Hooked on Science. I didn’t see much of his show since Littlest was not impressed but the rest of the crew had a wonderful time. They got to watch a watermelon explode, witness a human electrical circuit, and learn to balance nineteen nails on a single nail. I’ve never taken the kids to any library programs in the past because I’ve always had a baby or toddler to haul around. And taking Littlest was about as unpleasant as I expected but the rest of the crew enjoyed themselves. I really should have been taking them to these sort of events anyway…
Linking up with: Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
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