.....thus Saturday will have to be blog entry day.  Of course all the cute and funny anecdotes from the week complete escape me by then! 

We had a full week of school, which felt really good!  Although the kids were asking by Wednesday, "Is it Friday yet?"  I guess they aren't so different than regular schoolers in that respect.  I think it was about time they had some good brain stimulation again.  I guess it's been awhile since I've given much of a school update.

It seems Anna has the most to report.  This is why I love Kindergarten.....they make SO much progress over the course of a year.  She is reading so well and can now write all her letters.  She just learned the long vowel sounds and about two vowel words, which opens up so much more that she can read!  In Math, she can now count and write numbers to 100.  She knows addition families 1-6.....her lessons have only introduced through 4, but she was so anxious to have more flashcards like the boys that I've been slipping in the 5's and 6's to see if she gets them.  And, she does!  She just learned how to count by tens and can now count combinations of dimes and pennies.  See, it just seems like alot!

The boys have just started cursive writing.  Abeka curriculum recommends starting them in K with this, but I hesitated....feeling like that was too confusing and wanting them to print well.  I may start Anna earlier.  The boys are happy that they can read cursive now, but aren't enjoying the new style of writing.  Maybe it will get better.  We just started.  In Language Arts, we have discovered that Grade 2 isn't all that different from Grade 1.  They don't introduce much that is brand new, mostly hammering home things that were introduced in Grade 1.  To counteract that, we've been doing lots of creative writing....which they really enjoy.  It's a great opportunity for correcting spelling and punctuation!  Otherwise, they are doing more and better reading, more and better writing and more and better spelling.  Math is a little better as far as NEW stuff.  Seems we are constantly getting new concepts or just BIGGER versions of old ones.  They are adding and subtracting into the thousands now, with borrowing and carrying.  They can count all kinds of money, dollars and cents.  We are doing more with understanding fractions.  And we are about to start multiplication again with division looming.  So more challenge in math. 

In History, we are still using "The Light and the Glory" for kids.  We just read about the missionaries who began settling N. America:  the spanish monks who settled the southwest and the French Jesuits who settled the Northeast/Great Lakes area.  We always spread out a big map so we can track everything we read.  This chapter also introduced something we'd not talked about before:  Martyrs.  Many of these missionaries were martyred by hostile indians that they ministered to.  This opened up a lengthy discussion about martyrs today, Bible characters who were willing to stick to what they believed at the risk of their lives, and why the indians would have been hostile.  In the end, Johnny informed me that he likes History best of all the subjects because, "we learn what really happened and how things got to be".  Cool.    For Science, we took a short break from our bird studies to do a Discovery Toys Color Lab that Johnny got for Christmas.  So this week we did experiments with mixing colors and next week we'll finish it with how acids/bases react with colors and how animals see different colors. 

SO that about wraps school up.  It's wonderful to have the weekend, but I'm trying hard to catch up on the housework since we have a busy next week AND football games to watch!  Plus, the boys want to go skiing if it snows.  They learned to ski!  Did I say that in my last post?  Can't remember.  Anyway, yes....the football smiley is going to stay for this post b/c we can't WAIT to watch the game!  All the playoffs are predicted to be really close (except the Patriots one)  I'm so nervous!  Well, it's 2.5 hrs to gametime.  Time enough for lunch, a couple loads of laundry and the rest of the clutter downstairs.  I have to go chase the kids into their rooms to straighten.  Leah went with Matt to the grocery store to get us stocked up for the week. 

I guess my interesting reading will have to wait until next post.