Perhaps to much togetherness? 9/14/12

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I’m not sure where this week has gone but I am glad it is almost over.  These last few days have been tough – not because of school, Elizabeth is really excelling in her work, but the girls have been really picking at each other. I shouldn’t point fingers, but it is mainly Katie  picking at Elizabeth. My best guess right now is that she is bored. Before starting school I had envisioned her mostly doing school though not expecting her to absorb it all.  From the start she really hasn’t been interested. The first week she played nicely by herself but each week has found her distracting us more and more.  Something for us to work on. I also need to work on how i respond to it.  I find the bickering to be very wearing and by bedtime I am completely worn out. Right now I’m ready for a break, just too much togetherness I guess.

But you know, as I flip through my pictures from the week, she really did do a lot with us, she likes listening to our various books and she enjoyed our new home art class on dvd.

Speaking of art class, I bought a Kindergarten art class on dvd on a whim after seeing it reviewed on a blog and it has been a great buy for only $25. We’ve gone through two lessons so far and only two because I said no to doing 3 lessons in only 2 days. See pics of our hands done in primary colors and a secondary color background (lesson 1) and then see our lemonade sign to see our happy sun project that we painted, cut and glued. This dvd is professionally done and obviously taught by someone who knows kids and how to work them through a project.  I’m really looking forward to doing more of these.

Also new this week was dance class.  We showed up for Katie’s first class on Monday morning to discover that she was the only one registered.  The teacher still held the class for this week and then asked us to switch to a different day going forward, which we will, but it means we’ll miss story time at the library. Anyway, Katie had a great time in her class and really connected with her teacher so hopefully next week will also go well.  I had hoped that Elizabeth and I would do some school work during Katie’s dance class, and we did manage to get a little in, but not as much as I’d hoped. Perhaps next week will be better. Elizabeth has her dance class that night and she was so excited to see her friends and loved the tap dance part of class the best (though the teacher mentioned that she did an especially good job at ballet).

Back to school stuff, we completed several more lessons in our math curriculum. She is picking this up all very easily, I though about skipping lessons, but decided it would be better to shorten up the review portions of the lessons instead.

Reading also went awesome this week.  We’ve been doing the writing and review portion of the lessons on our front porch windows with washable window markers. I discovered I’ve been stretching these lessons out longer than necessary.  It takes us 3-4 days to get through a lesson that was designed for 2 days.  We did a full lesson on Thursday and it worked out fine so we’ll try a faster pace next week and see how it goes.

 

 

The Lemonade Stand: Elizabeth has been asking all summer to do a lemonade stand. I kept putting it off because I feared that she wouldn’t get many sales due to our location. But this week I had a revelation! I asked if the girls could set up at our farmer’s market. They charged the girls $5 just like all the other vendors, but they did allow us to set up and it was fun! We used our toy cash register and talked about seed money and making change. Elizabeth was a rock star, she sat at the table for 1-1/2 – 2 hours before asking to go over to the playground with a friend. In the end they each earned $5 after expenses and each bought a $2 pumpkin at the market. But it was fun and I imagine this is in our future again (good thing it was the last market of the season or the girls might ask to do it again already next week!)

Funny story: last night I pulled out a stack of worksheets for our handwriting lessons and from our logic workbook to use for next week, when i came down for breakfast Elizabeth had already completed more than half of them and proceeded to finish the rest before eating. Ha! I didn’t tell her it was more than she needed to do 🙂

We took a break from school this morning and watched some PBS kids this morning and I’m thinking about taking the girls for a walk in the woods after lunch… We haven’t done that all summer, hopefully it will go well.

PS After I posted this we went to the duck pond and playground and did an organized nature study.  The kids all drew ducks and we used our bird book to look up mallards and Canadian Geese to learn a few tidbits about them.  Time outside and time with friends really helped our outlook and we enjoyed a much more peaceful weekend.

Katie danceArt lesson 1Art lesson 1Art lesson 1Art lesson 1Art lesson 1Art lesson 1New Math BalanceReadingWindow MarkersArt lesson 2LemonadeLemonadeWindow MarkersMonkey BarsClimbingFeeding the ducksDrawing the ducksMonkey Bars

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