It is gray and rainy here today, and I am having a very hard time focusing on anything other than the chaos going on in Boston. I’m scattered. I hope next week is far less newsworthy than this one’s been. I’ve spent a lot of this week praying, hugging the kids (excessively, if you ask them) and embracing our routine.

Language Arts

Reading
We’re right about in the middle of “Gone-Away Lake” by Elizabeth Enright. It’s a kind-of-weird story about a couple of kids on their summer vacation who find a dilapidated, mostly abandoned summer village and befriend the elderly brother and sister who still live there. It was published in 1958, and despite being weird it’s been a pretty peaceful and comforting read. The kids are really enjoying it.

Grammar
Poppy started on level two of “Growing with Grammar” a few weeks ago. She doesn’t love doing it, but the lessons are pretty short so she gets through it without too much complaining. Right now the kids are watching episode 402 of “Martha Speaks,” which is all about verbs and adverbs. It’s excellent.

Spelling
Poppy is very close to the end of Spellwell AA. I’m considering giving her a break from “formal” spelling lessons once she’s finished it.

Math

Poppy’s McRuffy curriculum introduced multiplication this week, and I’m hoping it helps her wrap her mind around the concept. I think she gets it in principle, but she’s been very reluctant to memorize the multiplication tables. Poppy was very surprised that McRuffy did fractions before multiplication. It was the other way around in Teaching Textbooks.

Pete’s book started him on addition this week, and he breezed through the lessons. That’s the benefit of seeing your older sibling’s education in action, I guess.

Science

I’m waiting for Insect Lore to send us some ladybugs and caterpillars, so we didn’t do any “official” science this week. The kids did do a little engineering on their own, though, in what they called “The Invention Lab.” They raided the recycling bin and made all sorts of gadgets for a game they were playing with some toy cars. Pete also invented a blueberry dispenser, which allows you to pour your blueberries from an old root beer can into a bowl with little-to-no blueberry loss! They spent a few hours on their projects, and today is the first day this week that I haven’t had to step over recycling detritus to get to the kitchen.

History

We read about the Mongols this week in “Story of the World.” Poppy wrote about what she learned on her blog. We talked a little bit about the legend of Mulan, and they watched the Disney version of the story. We also made some Chinese paper lanterns, using this Martha Stewart video tutorial as a guide. Of course I didn’t have any double-sided tape on hand, so we used pink duct tape. We used paintings the kids made earlier in the week to form the interior cylinder. I like the way the painting kind of peeks out from behind the fringy stuff.

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