Saturday is where I'll start, since that is the first day of "this past week" with today being Friday. I started Saturday off by staying up entirely too late the night before, chatting online with a missionary friend of mine who is in Mexico. I got to bed around 3am, figuring Scott could handle the morning meal so that I could get a little extra sleep. I was wrong. He had to go to urgent care for some pretty nasty pain, which turned out to be a severe kidney infection. Which led to our taking Monday off schoolwork; the doctor told him he was to take that day off work and stay in bed so that the medications can give his body a good head start fighting off the infection. Daddy at home is not good for our schooling, and we always just end up having to cancel the day's lessons when that happens. He is too distracting to me and the kids, even if he stays in bed with the door closed so we don't see or hear him.
Sunday we got Preston's first pair of shoes. I'm not talking those cute little leather soled crib shoes. I mean REAL shoes with an actual sturdy sole to protect his feet when walking in public. He was not impressed with his new little brown boots, but he'll get used to them soon enough. I got them at Sears on sale for $10 (regularly $40) and I also got him a little track suit for $5.40 (marked down from $35).
Thursday we had a plumbing issue come up that had me on the phone most of the day, trying to find a plumber willing to fix it with our old pipes and access issues. I couldn't find one, so tomorrow Scott gets to buy a shovel and do some digging in our front yard to find the access pipe that a previous owner buried under a raised garden so our regular drain guy can come fix it for us on Monday or Tuesday. The issue isn't preventing us from doing the basic functions, we just can't do laundry until the drain guy comes to resolve the issue.
Then today, I got a package in the mail. I placed an order last weekend at Amazon for a couple supplies that we need here. Kimmy and Jojo are learning to tell time, so I got them a small learning clock to work with instead of the paper one that they made with their math books. I probably should have gotten 2 clocks so I can teach them together, but this will guarantee that we have 1:1 time on a topic until I can buy a second one (tax refund whenever it gets here, then when they master time I can keep both and have a clock for me and one for Preston when he is ready to start learning to tell time). They are both excited to start working on telling time with a sturdy clock today; they dislike having to be so careful with the paper one we have been using.
Also in the box was something for Missa.
I found a gap in Missa's knowledge when I did placement testing with her in another math curriculum before we started up again in Math-U-See, and instead of taking the time to search through all the levels I own (Primer to Algebra 1) I decided to just get her a workbook dedicated to that skill. I've heard great things about the "Key To" series, so I decided to purchase the 4 workbook set for measurement. She really struggles in this area, not knowing how many inches are in a foot and so on (I know part of this is my own failure to get it into her long-term memory when she was homeschooling prior to this year, and the school had trouble too), so we are going to do a season focusing on JUST measurement with her. I'm going to start in book 1 as soon as she finishes her current lesson in Gamma, then when I feel comfortable that we've covered "enough" we will pick up Gamma again to finish it while we keep plugging forward. I hope this series does as well as I've heard they do at teaching concepts. If it does, then when Missa finishes Delta (the next level in her math program) we'll add the Key To books to her math (they have fractions and decimals and all that great stuff, so when we get to that point we could technically switch completely for a while if we wanted to once she understands the 4 basic operations).
Preston got something too in this purchase. I was $3 short of free shipping for this purchase, so I added in a new cup for him to use.
His first straw sippy cup. He loves it. He is constantly trying to steal his sisters' cups if they have a straw, and doesn't do too well with drinking from a regular spout cup so I thought this would be a perfect time to move him up to a straw cup. The kid LOVES milk, and now I don't have to hold him in my lap and fight him about holding a regular cup with a straw so that he can have his milk. This also means that he can have his drink in the van too, just like his big sisters and their water bottles.
Of course, this week wasn't just about schoolwork, a sick husband, and a package coming in the mail. We had fun together, and learned through living quite a bit. This week we also had a lesson about dogs and their sense of hearing when Missa ran the sweeper and our dog kept attacking it and barking hysterically. We had impromptu cooking lessons and some random extra chores that we did, discussed the process of a broken bone healing (as Missa got antsy a couple times and wants out of her walking cast so that she can run and play freely again), and the oldest 2 girls even did a small "written report" on an invertebrate of their choice (Missa did a starfish, Liddy did an octopus) while Kimmy drew a picture of a jellyfish. We had a lot of fun together as a family through all the things we did this week, and learned things that cannot be taught by a curriculum.
1 comment:
It sounds like a good week even with life interruptions like plumbing and illness! I think I would be going crazy in a walking cast too after a while.
I've heard good things about the Key To series, you'll have to let me know if you like it.
You know, I need to see if Mason can figure out a straw sippy cup. He can't balance sitting enough to tip up his regular sippy cup so he always has to lay down to drink it, but a straw one would mean he didn't have to tip it up.
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