2011-2012 Week 1 of School

We had a terrific first day of school, but I was tired and feeling rundown by Wednesday (or was it Tuesday night).

This week CC
-- Completed Four lessons of Life of Fred
-- Did One chapter from The Brain by Ellen McHenry
-- Read and discussed Two chapters from Sophie's World
-- Started reading about Creation Myths from around the world
-- Finished reading Night of the Twisters and A Little Princess, started reading a big collection of Mark Twain. 
-- Summarized a chapter from SToW
-- Read and discussed the first chapter of the Story of Science
-- Did copywork from IEW poetry everyday to refresh her memory of the poems she learned last year
-- Did two pages of Shurley Grammar homework, started learning her grammar jingles, wrote a newsletter about herself, reread the first four chapters of A Secret Garden for Literature and worked on some vocabulary and word roots.
-- Reviewed the Spanish vocabulary she learned last week
-- Started working on a barn for her sister's horses
-- Made a map of an amusement park then spent two hours with her sister visiting it.
-- Did a lesson from Classiquest Biology wither her friend
-- Spent a day at her enrichment school learning language arts, Spanish, art, and music.

This week LB
-- Did 3 lessons of Saxon
-- One lesson from Singapore's Math in Focus
-- Did 6 pages of ETC3
-- Worked on cursive handwriting
-- Read the first McRuffy reader
-- Drew, colored, named, and laminated a lot of dinosaurs
-- Excavated a dinosaur skeleton
-- Taught Daddy how to pronounce dinosaur names
-- Listened to some fairy tales
-- Retold a fairy tale
-- Went to tap class and Judo
-- Started learning about our state history, learned a new song, made some art, learned a new p.e. game, and played with her friends at her enrichment school
 -- Went to the dentist

Together
-- Wow, I had always imagined that I'd be able to conveniently combine them in some subjects and spend a wonderful time learning together but at different levels.  That just isn't happening.  LB spent so much time tagging along with CC when she was younger that she doesn't want anything like that anymore.  She wants her own learning that is just hers.  I spent a lot of my time just trying to keep them from annoying each other while they were doing their work.  I decided that I'll put the effort into keeping their work separate so that when they are done with school, they'll feel like playing together.

I learned this week that I need to make sure school happens first thing in the day.  I also learned that this is HARD.  I think I should have known this by now.  In case you were wondering, Wednesday we worked on finishing CC's writing assignment until almost 10 pm; I just couldn't get all of their and my work into a normal sized day.    I am grateful that I spent so much time planning things so I can be mostly "do the next thing" in all of my subjects, or I would not have survived this week.  I am also grateful that my mom and hubby are home to help me juggle work and homeschooling, or it would never work.