This week has been a week of struggles and changes. Finally, after a few days of crying out to God for wisdom and help, I think I have my answer.

Our struggles have been in the way our day is set up, and also my expectations of The Boy. Because he has done so well with math in the past, we kept plowing ahead, not realizing that our transition from Math U See to Right Start last year wasn’t enough. He’s really struggling with place value and understanding the concepts in his head. So, we’ve decided to take a step back from Level C and start over again with Level B. Throw aside my expectations of skipping him ahead a grade in the math, and do what is best for him. My pride aside and his needs first. And I feel great about it!

Another struggle we’ve been having is with our daily schedule. I think part of the math problem is perhaps that it is the very first thing we do, without much warm up. So we’re changing things around that way also to look completely different and starting with some easier subjects to get their brains warmed up. As always, I am excited to get back at it next week and so thankful for the Lord’s great mercy and provision of wisdom when we call out for help!

For now, here is our last week in review:

Bible

Pearables: The Narrow Way – Allegiance, being an obedient servant. We worked out some ways that the kids can continue to be servants to each other. I was really challenged by this too, having a servant attitude in serving THEM every day!

We also started into How the Bible Came to Us. We are not reading every day, but the kids are captivated by it and thoroughly enjoying (as am I!) learning about how the books are divided up and a little more on who some of the writers were. Praying that we give them a solid foundation of truth!

BFIAR – Blueberries for Sal

We did a few more activities on Blueberries for Sal (all printables from Homeschool Creations). In future, when we do the BFIAR books, I am going to try to pick a focus for each day so I’m not flip-flopping around with it so much! No photos of worksheets this time, since it was the same, but Keekers had some fun with chore training….

…and learning “upside down and backwards” :D

Handwriting Without Tears

We started full swing into it this week. Everyone wants to be involved, so it is one of our first group lessons of the day. We did Frog Jump Letters hop, Capital F and E, posture and position and grip focus.

Science – Apologia Land Animals of the Sixth Day

We continued with chapter 2 on carnivorous mammals. This week was Canines, mainly focused on wolves and foxes. Because we have a zoo membership, we took Wednesday morning off to seek out what canines we could find in an hour and a half.

The kids were so thrilled to see the Arctic Wolves moving around a bit – they’re usually pretty boring, may be the cooler weather is bringing them out of their shells! One of them was even silent howling at some kids who were howling at it!

We’ve been learning how canines communicate, this sign was a big help in determining more of the ways wolves communicate.

They crawled through an arctic fox den, then had a great time watching the mama chase the baby around its pen (which we know is future training for escaping predators / catching their prey).

At home, we did a Zoo report sheet – JJ focused on foxes (info and learning to draw) and The Boy on wolves.

On longer trips we’ll take some of these sheets and the Safari booklet with us.

One of the best things I learned this week was just exactly what adaptation is. Really, it’s quite fascinating when you think about it! Jeannie explains it somewhat like this:

God created 1 kind of dog that contained all the genes of the current dog breeds we have today. When those 2 dogs came off the ark, they bred and spread. Depending on the environment they lived in, they kept different features – IE if wolves in the arctic had short hair and long hair, the ones with short hair would die off, unable to survive in the extreme cold, thus leaving behind the ones with long hair, and therefore the gene for short hair would eventually die off! Does that make sense? If not, you really should just read what is written in the book, it’s on pages 21-22!

Math – Right Start Level A (SK) andC (Gr 2)

We did not do much with The Boy this week, as we back-tracked a lot, and are starting over with Level B next Tuesday.

JJ continued on with learning more about even and odd numbers, and started on basic place value with tally sticks and rows of beads on the abacus. And he still loves math! :D

Phonics – Christ Centered Curriculum Level B2 (SK) and C3 with First Language Lessons Level 2(Grade 2)

The decision has been made to order All About Spelling. I just don’t feel we’re getting much out of the CCC stuff anymore, and while it has been great up to this point, it’s time to move on!

FLL we are studying more on helping verbs – let’s see if I can remember the list: Am, Is, Are, Was, Were, Be, Being, Been. Have, Has, Had, Do, Does, Did, Can, Could, Should, Would….I forget the rest :D

JJ – Level B2 in the CCC – We did beginning and ending “ch”, ending “tch” – it’s all running together in my head. He’s getting it though! We picked up the Early Readers Level 1 from Alpha & Omega as he needs and wants something easy to read! We’ve read halfway through the Level 1 Book 1 and he’s really enjoying them.

Reading – Anything and Everything!

Danny Meadow Mouse is becoming more and more exciting as the mouse tries different methods of escaping the foxes tactics. The kids (and I) are enthralled!

We took a trip to the library and picked out a bunch of books from Read for the Heart, and some to add in to our science. We’re also into Sounder – I’m a bit concerned how they will handle the news of the dog being shot next chapter, but we’ll take it as it comes. They love any stories about dogs and cried their eyes out watching Old Yeller…love my sensitive boys!

The Boy read and reported on “The Big Balloon Race”. I found a LOT of online resources for this one, specifically this one, which we used for vocabulary and discussing specifics of each chapter. Flying High With Hot Air Balloons was another fantastic outline we found for pulling more out of a story. Each day The Boy did a narrative of the chapter he read, we discussed important vocab, and he drew a picture of one event that occurred.

At the end, we built a crossword with Discovery Puzzle Maker for his daddy to solve, with his vocabulary words.

For Fun

The boys decided to have a tonka race car burn out competition. I kept warning them they were literally going to burn out the batteries. I think they did this for 20 minutes! And the batteries are still good! Oh the things boys think up to do.