Week 3

I am so excited... we have had three week so school so far -- and we have completed 3 weeks of school. Woo Hoo... if you have no clue what I'm talking about -- well, then good for you. LOL But some weeks... we don't quit get 1 week of work done.

We are still doing Creation to the Greeks. We are in the final weeks of that unit. We just completed week 31. We began to read the book Archimedes and the Door of Science. Chapter 3 is about the Archimedian screw. Our neighbors happen to HAVE an archimedian screw. So I called them up to see if the kiddos could come see it in real life. He was at work, but happened to check his message and he called back right away -- how nice. So Tori, Mansel, Milo and I went and took a look at an AUGER. 5 augers actually. Different sizes. Hooked up to different machines. He uses a tractor to turn some of his augers. Ü Just imagine -- 2000 years later we are still using this great idea. Originally it was designed to pull water from the Nile river, now my kids have some idea how that might have worked.

We are reading Aesops Fables during lunch... well - after I eat and while the kiddos are finishing up. I didn't realize Aesop was a servant...but now I do. Another reason why I love home schooling... I never knew, but now I do. °Ü°

Mansel slowed down with his math this week. Singapore Math 1B. He has finished up day 28 after 21 days of school. One nice thing about home schooling... when we were waiting for Dad on day, on the way to Tori's cross country meet, Mansel sat in the van and completed some math corrections. How convenient! I love home schooling. I see his next few days are days of review. We'll do those orally, and practice some skip counting. Diving, sharing, sets, and groups are coming up.

I was lazy and on the computer too much this week. We didn't do any spelling. So -- one wonders why Tori can't spell. It may be my fault. Maybe... I'm not accepting all the blame. Next week -- no computer until school is done. I promise.

Milo and 100 EZ lessons are still on speaking terms. I've decided that he doesn't necessarily NEED to do 1 lesson a day. We will only do 100 EZ lessons for 20 minutes... if he isn't bored after 20 minutes we'll keep going. But several days this week -- we was ready to quit after 20 minutes... so we did. We really did more this week, then last week, while trying to force him to do 1 lesson a day. We are now on lesson 48. ALMOST 1/2 way done. Praise God. He is confusing funny things. He'll look at a sh and way "n". Hopefully we'll figure that out soon. His sense of humor is different than Mansel's. Mansel just thought the stories were silly -- he put up with them. Milo LAUGHS and LAUGHS at the girl who "gave him a sock on his nose." Oh he thought that was so funny. What a joy. I love to hear him laugh. I hope he will learn to love reading -- it really can be fun. Ü

We are skipping the "sounds writing" portion of this book now because he got a Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting book in the mail this week. He is flying through it -- then he has to go back and correct his mistakes. LOL But he really likes it. So I'm letting him do it when ever he wants as much as he wants. He did this is the van as well while we were waiting for Dad the other day.

Tori is ready for a test in Apologia Science. She is 1 week behind on this. I finally sat her down and reminded her that she was in 7th grade now. She MUST get her work done, and she will often times be required to do school totally on her own, and she may have to start with out being told. LOL MAYBE!! Oh man alive. She isn't getting up on time. What a silly goose... she'll apologize every time, but her alarm isn't waking her up. The problem is that I don't want to quit exercising to go wake her... FRIDAY I remembered that I can pause my live TV now... so Monday... if she sleeps in... I'm pushing pause and waking her up. We are skipping things like piano practice and spelling to get her back on schedule. We CAN'T just go longer because of cross country. She isn't getting much free time... but she is using it all up in bed in the mornings.

Her math is progressing slow but sure. I have her check her own work and then RE-DO the ones she misses. I've had friends who tell me their kids cheat when they do that. But so far she hasn't figured that out yet. She gets so mad at herself for missing stuff.. and she sits and re-does each one. I'm so proud of her. So she isn't doing 1 lesson a day, but she's doing math most days. When I sat down with my "rest of the schooling plan", I noticed her math looks advanced. What if she isn't an advanced math kind of gal. She already is on the "hard math" path. The public school kids are either doing pre-algebra or just "math" in 7th grade. How do the public school kids decide what sort of math to do? If they are going to college -- do they choose pre-algebra? I'm sticking with her math that she is doing now... I'm not telling her she is on the "hard" path. But if in the next several years it gets too hard... what are the other home school options? I only know Saxon...

I sat down with a notebook and figured out our school plan until Wayne would graduate. If I stick with My Father's World all the way through high school, I should know how much we will be spending until all my kids are done. Some years we will be buying grade school units AND high school units. I think I have 2 years of that. Maybe 3, I can't remember -- the notebook is in the other room. Oh - it's three because I borrowed one year, the first geography year, so when that rolls around again, I'll have to buy that one for myself. BUT -- as soon as we get done buying the grade school years, then it will drop back down again to only buying high school. It will average out to $350 per year - for the next 16 years. Yeah... some years are quit high. I'm starting to pray now that God will provide. And -- I'm thinking of setting up a database of all the books I need, with the new prices from MFW, and starting to pick them up used. Then when that year rolls around, I can pull them all together and only buy new what I don't have yet. I know that sounds like a good plan, but it takes time. I started buying all new from MFW to save me time. But -- that can be expensive. I'm praying for wisdom.

We have done well with our ART. That's fun -- we drew a quarter, penny, nickel, and a dime, then made up our own coin. We were learning about Greek money. It was fun to see the different children's coins. I should figured out how to scan art work and put that up here. Someday...

All of us are trying to learn Isaiah 40:22-31. We started in the KJV doing this and we really were not getting very far. So Tori has to learn this in the New KJV starting with vs 22 instead of 21. We review it during Bible class, then during lunch, sometimes in the evenings. Tori has to learn it for her ProTeens class at church. Killing 2 birds with one stone. We are getting some of it... certainly not getting it down pat... but we've got a few more weeks to work on it.

We are not doing any music yet. I didn't buy the music for this unit, and regretted it. So when we start up Rome to Reformation we'll add in the music class. I DID buy it for this unit.

Tori has read the book HOLES, and is now starting on her Progeny Press study guide. She read it in 1 day. TORI-- that was supposed to last you 1/2 a year. Maybe the study guide will slow her down a bit. LOL

She is having fun doing Writing Strands. She thinks the author's sense of humor is funny.

Next week: My Goal -- do spelling every day.