This week is going to be fun for us. I decided over the weekend that we needed to change how we do our lessons, so we start this week with a new weekly schedule. Monday was our housework and errands day (good thing too, as I had an appointment yesterday afternoon and needed to go to the grocery store in the morning) and then we do lessons on Tuesday through Friday. Saturday mornings will be electives or catch-up time, as Scott typically works on Saturday mornings (this week he isn't though, so he is taking the girls to Home Depot for the monthly workshop and then maybe to the park if weather is good, that will give me time to grade papers and get some things planned out, plus go grocery shopping for next week if I want to or even take a nap).
Since today is Tuesday, I thought I would go ahead and share what we are going to be studying this week in our lessons. I'm really excited about this week, knowing that we're going to have some real structure to our days.
Our big study this week is on the state of Alabama. I have a Scholastic book that I'm going to use for this, and my "Lapbook Any State" set from Hands of a Child ready to go. Each morning I'm printing off 4 copies of the day's minibooks so they can do them, and we're going to glue them onto cardstock in binders. We are going to do all 50 states this way. I have all the basics of the state obviously planned, but one really fun thing we're going to do is spending Friday learning about Helen Keller. She was born in Alabama, and I thought it would be a great little addition. I have a couple books on her for the lesson (1 picture book to read to the younger kids plus two biographies for the older girls to read and fill out a report sheet on her) and I found a braille book at the library that I checked out so I can show them firsthand how the blind read. We're also going to try being blind and deaf by using ear plugs and a blindfold then navigating our home and doing simple things like eating a snack. I want this to really come alive for the girls so they can see her struggles and what she overcame in her lifetime. Later we'll revisit Helen Keller and spend some real time learning all about her, but this week is just an introduction to her for the kids.
In math, the girls are working on lapbooks for math facts. Missa and Liddy are working on multiplication facts, as they are both in Math-U-See Gamma, while Kimmy and Jordan are doing addition facts to go with Alpha and Beta. Once they finish the lapbooks this week, I plan to have the girls do a timed math drill sheet for their facts each morning before they review and practice their facts with their lapbooks daily. By the end of the next few weeks, hopefully the girls will have their facts memorized and can move on to the next one (division or subtraction).
And through all this, I'm going to be one-handed so the girls have to be my helper. I tried last week to teach Missa how to do a proper push-up and managed to hurt my left shoulder. Having it in a sling wouldn't be such an issue if I wasn't left-handed, but we're working with it and making things happen. Missa gets to do more cooking while I supervise, and a lot of the chores are not getting done as I would prefer because I have to get the kids helping a lot more. Hopefully it heals quickly, as the compromise in chores is driving me batty.
Then there is next week. Next week Scott is on vacation so he'll be home all day. We're going to take a break from formal lessons and focus instead on the more fun stuff. We have our annual portfolio review this week, and we plan to go to the Columbus Zoo and get our annual membership (the membership costs almost as much as one visit with a family our size, and this year we're doing the one that admits 2 guests as well so I'll be able to use it a lot more since I'm not comfortable taking all 5 myself during the week, maybe my wonderful cousin will come a couple times with us). We also have plans to get the gardens going here, all the flowers planted (hopefully!) and the garden dug for my veggies. I told Scott that if he thinks we need to wait for next year to plant so that this year we can prep the garden that I'm ok with it, but I'd really rather get something planted (peppers and tomatoes at a minimum, we go through sooooo many of both those things!). We are really looking forward to the opportunity to spend an entire week working together as a family.
Well, that about sums up my next two weeks, so I'll see you later. I'll post on Friday with a summary of how this week went, complete with pictures hopefully, and then next week I'll try to post some pictures of our trip to the zoo and working in the gardens and stuff like that. I'm just hoping that I don't spend all of next week in a sling to go with it, I hate being pretty much useless like I am right now.
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