Upside of a water main break?

I have more blogging time! :)

I was going to give the little ones a much needed bath, and also do the dishes, when lo and behold, we have NO water. A phone call reveals there has been a water main break down the street. Good thing I did the laundry this morning!

A few people have asked me about some of our new curriculum and how our days are shaping up lately, so with this little gift of time, I was hoping to get a post out on that.

I'm going to give you an approximation of how our day went, with descriptions of our curriculum and style thrown around willy nilly, as you know I am wont to do. (Can you tell I have been reading Sense and Sensibility? I used the word wont. LOL)

The morning started slowly - everyone but Juliet was up early for some reason - I emptied the dishwasher, threw in laundry (thank goodness, right?), and showered (again, good thing!). By 9 everyone was up and fed and dressed, except Jeffrey who insists on spending much of his day in his pajamas. I don't normally "choose my battles," but this one is not worth fighting if it keeps him happy while we are doing school! One less thing for me to do. Anyway, onward and upward.

Today the top two, and sometimes three (so a 12, 10, and almost 7yo) sat with me on and around the couch while we read and discussed most of our curriculum. The youngest two (and sometimes three - the 2yo, 4yo, and almost 7yo) ran around in front of us, climbed on us, and were generally loud. I am getting better at being happy that they want to be with us and just reading louder. But sometimes I do shoo them away or encourage them to play "Sleeping Bears" (they lie down and the first one to move or speak loses) :)

Our sit down work now includes:

-Bible reading. I try to do this first. One chapter in the OT, one in the NT. I offer to read but my girls like to do it instead. They ask questions and I try to answer as best I can. Now and then I offer what I know even if they don't ask - but I try not to talk too much. I found a New American Bible Pocket edition at Goodwill over Christmas break, so now we have two and each older girl can read along.

- Next came Catechism. Every few days I read another chapter of our St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism #1. Sometimes on the inbetween days I quickly go over the questions we've covered so far, sometimes not. I *want* them to memorize these things, but I want it to be more in a natural/repetitious way than in a "YOU MUST MEMORIZE THIS OR I WILL BANG YOU WITH A RULER" kind of way. Really, I want the gist and understanding of the answers to be theirs when they are older, not necessarily the word for wordiness of it. So I say and they repeat, but I don't test them on it. (as of now) Memorizing is a BEAR for my dyslexic. I'm not going to make her hate religion study by requiring too much of it.

-I have dialed WAY back on history lately. Some days we read Famous Men of Rome which goes well with our Latin study (Latina Christiana includes some questions you can use with FMOR). To shake things up, we listen to the chapter on audio. Saves my voice, too, since I'm reading/talking much of the morning now. Today we needed something lighter, so I read half of Modern Rhymes About Ancient Times: Ancient Egypt. We love these books (we have Ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece) - and I see that I am lucky I bought them when I did as they are now out of print. :-( Oldest dd did half of Oak Medow 6 last semester, so these rhymes are a nice/cute/fun reminder of what she read back then. I will probably throw in a few historical fiction selections on ancient times before our study is over, but only a few. Simplify, simplify, simplify! Just FYI, my 6yo has been listening in and absorbing most of our morning, I count that as her history and religion also. Her other work is covered in a big 2nd grade workbook I got from Barnes and Noble, which I need to sit with her and do more - she needs my presence even though she knows the work.

- After yukking it up with the poems (...In Egypt when a pharaoh died they didn't use formaldehyde. Instead they used a secret way to keep his body from decay...) we move on to Grammar Town at the insistence of all three girls. We are almost done with it, having covered the parts of speech and the parts of a sentence over the past few weeks, and today the facts about phrases - prepositional, verbal, and appositives. I *really* learned a lot today! And promptly forgot as much (lol, I just had to look up what we covered today). The series also has practice books which we will make much use of as soon as I have finished Grammar Town. That's how they recommend using it - intro the basics quickly even though it's a lot to remember, then re-teach as you apply it over and over. When we're done with GT there is a vocabulary book, a paragraph writing book, and a poetry book all at this level. I'm honestly not sure how I will make that all fit together - and I do want to continue with rewriting short fables the way Classical Writing Aesop introduces...so I will probably flip flop weeks, always doing SOME language arts on every day but not always the same thing.

-That filled their brains quite a bit, so they sat back and drew while I read from the Burgess Animal Book. This book, while looking all cute and easy --they name the animals things like Peter Rabbit, Chatterer the Squirrel, and Danny Meadow Mouse for goodness sakes -- is actually CHOCK full of great information on the lives, appearance, and habits of the animals it is discussing. I thought about doing much more for science, but why? My children are listening and remembering much about these little creatures. We'll go observe what we can when the weather improves. When I'm *done* with this, then we'll move on to something else. Not sure what.

-All of that took us to our early lunch. Maggie flipped through our Latin flash cards while the others got their lunches ready. She also zipped through two Teaching Textbooks 5 lessons right after lunch, and then two pages of cursive. BTW, the people at Teaching Textbooks are very kind, patient, and helpful. I spent an hour on the phone with them yesterday while the lady helped me back up, uninstall, and reinstall 3 levels of TT due to some problems we were having.

- I put Jeffrey down for a nap right after lunch, and the three middle girls played on the Wii after Maggie finished her work. Juliet takes longer on her math so she has to go last or all our other work gets backed up. One lesson of TT7 for her.

-Then as I was writing up this post I realized we hadn't done ANY spelling for her since the break. BAD BAD BAD - she is my dyslexic and if we skip to much time she loses a lot of ground. She is working in Apples and Pears Spelling A, which due to it's constant review seems to be helping. She just didn't click with All About Spelling even though I think it's a great program. I still use some of the rules we learned with her ("now, remember why we use 'ck' here!") - but the tiles and cards were JUST not her cup of tea. So we would just orally go over and over the spelling word lists and phrases....and, yawn, none of it would stick. Apples and Pears has constand varied review, and it is keeping her interest. Interest is everything with my sanguine dyslexic! :)

So that's it - we covered religion, math, language arts (grammar, vocab, latin roots, spelling for one dd), history, science, Latin (more grammar, vocab) - we had fun, and it wasn't too much or too rushed. Crossing my fingers that we are finally finding our groove, because I'd love to continue on like this.