Sunday, March 27, 2011

Review of the week #20-- Concentration

A lot happened this week as always. My boys are following the same path the girls were on a couple years ago. It is so much easier on me this time around because I've been through it once and I actually know what I'm doing. I didn't push my girls hardly at all because I was worried about pushing them too much after I went through a phase where I really did push them too much. When #1 would complain about how hard something was like math, I would let her get away with only doing one or two pages cause maybe it was really hard. Then when she turned 10 I realized that she was behind where she needed to be in math, so she ended up working on math for 2-3 hours a day until she was caught up.

I'm smarter this time around, so now this week when #3 told me his math was soooooo hard, I told him he had to do it anyway. He rolled around for awhile and I wondered if he needed extra addition and subtraction practice since he seemed to have completely forgotten how to add big numbers. Then I remembered past experiences with the girls and told him that he does know how to do it and I had things to do and to let me know if he needed help, that when he finished he could play his turn on the wii since it was Friday. He wasted a bit more time, but finally at some point in the day-- I think his friends were coming over-- he buckled down and finished the assigned pages in about 15 min. It was not too hard for him-- he just didn't want to do it. Life!!

O.K.-- The girls worked mostly independently this week. They are moving right along. Their compositions are getting better. They are finishing in a timely manner and have had more free time than usual. #1 did write down some of her songs, we have to continue that. #2 is working on character building. She has a tendency to yell at people for the slightest provocation and also whines and cries way too much for a 10 year old. So she starts each day with 10 extra minutes on the wii and loses a minute on the wii for every outburst and whine and cry that she makes. She is doing amazingly well. The first day, she lost all her minutes, but she only lost 2-3 the rest of the days of the week. For her she just needs to realize what she's doing. What a relief. She is trying hard and I'm proud of her. She just requires a little more parenting than the other kids have in this regard.

#3 started 3B this week and is continuing with the Greek. It is harder than he likes to do, so his main work is to learn to focus and concentrate. Lucky for him, I'm smarter as explained above and it shouldn't take long for him to adjust to his new requirements. #4 focuses really well and likes checking things off. He finished the last 11 pages of his math book and took the test in the same day and passed. He also hung around whenever I was helping #3 with Greek so I let him go ahead and start Greek also. So those 2 boys will be working together just like the girls did. I'm very proud of him. It's fun to teach one who is so willing and finds it so fun.

#5 started reading lessons for real this week. He is learning to blend the letters and is doing better at that than I remember the other kids doing. He's very proud of himself. He read his first BOB book.

The babies were happier this week. They made a lot of messes and require a lot of time and energy, but it's O.K. because they are waaaaaay cute!! I love them so much. They actually enjoy group time and I can usually read and help the other kids with their school work when they're around. But when it looks like I'm going to leave the room-- watch out!! They start crying. It worked fine for school, but it was a pain trying to clean anything on Saturday. Oh well. We survived.

We had Group time 4 days this week. We memorized a short poem and D&C 14:7. We read a weird story in the Bible stories for children and continued discussions about the New Testament. We also started the Great Composers series and learned about Bach and Hayden. We also continued our music time, exercising and stretching, and languages. It is fun for me. We only had story time twice this week. We spent some time outside before it started snowing. We visited a petting zoo of the cutest baby animals ever. The girls are planning to perform an original play with some new homeschool girl friends they have made. We also went to the Classic Fun Center and left #5's tricycle there. We have to remember to go get it back this week.

We planted seeds to be ready to plant outside when it's warm. We tried to plant some more fruit trees but it was too cold for all of us. We want spring!! Whew!! No wonder I'm tired and it's late, but I'm glad I got all this down so I remember that even though the house is no where near perfect I have been doing stuff and it's O.K.!

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