May 14 - 18

Our Oak Meadow curriculum recommended finding a tree friend to visit frequently and to watch for changes across the seasons. This is ours. Suzi named him Treebo last fall.

We didn't get a ton of actual "work" done this week. We had some fellow homeschooling friends over Wednesday, went to the gym Thursday, and went berry picking Friday. I think, at least in my case, the number of outside activities a family can handle goes down as the number of children goes up. Especially when they are little children. I am trying to simplify--cut back on what costs lots of money, time, and energy, and keep the most worthwhile activities. After some consideration, I'm planning to cancel our gym membership. I can join the rec center that is local to my mom for a fraction of the cost, and she can help me take the kids swimming. There is a children's yoga class starting soon that I might sign the kids up for, too. Anyway, here is what we did...

Math - I made a number chart for Suzi sort of like this one from schoolsparks.com. I can't print in color right now, so I printed one I made myself and colored it. I started Suzi out counting by tens, just counting down the column on the right. This is most of what we accomplished in math. It needs practice.

Science - We read our Oak Meadow curriculum story about clouds, and looked at the different kinds of clouds while we were out. It was a good week for this because some days the clouds were white and fluffy, and some days the whole sky was covered. Suzi looked at clouds and tried to predict whether or not they were rain clouds.

Reading - We continued our easy readers and flash cards. Suzi can now identify the sight words we started her on (it, is, I, pie, Daddy, we, did) except for one--who. These are all words from the first couple of books she started reading. We are reading more new books now, because I don't want her to get bored and tired of doing the same ones over and over.

Clock - We are still doing well with full and half hours, and are slowly working on :15.

Health - We talked about ways of protecting our sight and hearing, and discussed how some people do not have use of all five senses.

Drama - The girls finished their drama class and we attended their short performance at the end. It was a Busy Town unit. Ivey played Sally Cat and Suzi was Miss Honey the Schoolteacher. They did a good job and were so cute! I was especially proud of Suzi, because she really didn't want to play that part. I explained to her that when you're an actor you don't usually get to pick what you want to play; that is the director's job. She played the part and did it well.

Physical activity - We went swimming at the gym one day, but that is mostly a mommy workout! The kids also played in the yard with friends and ran around at the berry farm.

Art - My parents had the girls at their house Saturday and took them to a local arts festival. I had been so excited to go, but ended up spending the entire day sick on the couch. I'm glad the girls got to go, at least.

Here they are on stage singing "You Are My Sunshine." Looks like they had a great time!