Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with a Sixth Grader

Yes, you read that title right. My first born is now, sniff, a sixth grader. Sniff, sniff. Against my wishes. Can you believe the nerve of this child? I should probably ground her.

In fact, I think I shall. And I'll give her extra math. And make her write a ten page report. By hand. And fix her liver and onions for lunch. That will teach her to squash all of this growing up.

And that is not all that this little girl did this week. She also got baptized. In the very ocean that God created with his own hands. The idea of being baptized in the very oceans that God mentioned creating in the Bible thrills me. As does the thought that maybe the water from Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, had made it's way to the Atlantic where my daughter was baptized. How exciting that thought is?

I will not ground her for this type of growth though. In this case I will rejoice with her and be a proud mama.

Now on to the rest of our Wrap-Up...

Mackenzie

As I mentioned, against my will, Mackenzie started sixth grade this week. We haven't started up a full load yet as we haven't started back up with our Sonlight studies  yet,  but we did start some of our new items and are finishing up a couple of other things. We did miss our Sonlight though.

We started our Institute for the Excellence in Writing this week. If you've read my blog in the past, then you'll know that finding the writing program that best fits our needs has been a challenge. We did really well with Writing With Ease but Writing With Skill didn't click with us the same way. Since I've only heard rave reviews about IEW, we decided to give it a try. So far so good. Just one week in and I'm ready to rave. Key word outlines? Genius!! Mackenzie was very excited about writing this week. Always a great way to start off the new school year.

We are finishing up our last few lessons in Math-U-See Epsilon. We got a little behind in it due the amount of math programs we reviewed last year. She was supposed to finish it up this summer but she was lazy about it so she has to start off sixth grade finishing last year's math. Bummer. lol

She's also working in Life of Fred fractions and loving it. The original plan was to just do a LOF lesson after completing each MUS lesson. But she thinks it's hilarious and does it every day without complaint. Math win!

And, as a mom, you just can't complain when your child wants to do extra math. It just wouldn't be right.

We're also finishing up our Growing With Grammar lessons from last year. That's not because of anything Mackenzie did or didn't do. It's because we started off the year using Advanced Language Lessons (follows First Language Lessons) and then in January the author decided that she wasn't going to finish writing ALL after all so we had to find something new. Despite the late start with GWG, she is almost finished with it. Then on to the level 6. Woot!

We started our new science, Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day, and it's going well. We've been skipping the experiments and projects because we're going to be doing those as a group with our friends. So we'll do that stuff next week. We're excited about working with our buddies.

We were happy to get back to our Visual Latin. Always a lot of fun. And we got back to our composer studies. This week we studied Verdi. We're also adding back in our artist studies that we didn't keep up with last year. We're using COAH's World's Greatest Artist units as our guide. I think having something scheduled will help keep us on track.

Mackenzie also started working in her Artistic Pursuits' book. I bought this because she had decided not to take art at Young Musicians of Virginia, but she's since changed her mind. But since I already bought the book, and it's self-led, she's going to do it anyway. This week she was learning about outlining objects.

All in all, our first week of middle school was a good one. Attitudes were in check, lessons completed in a timely manner. Here's hoping week two goes just as well.

Kayleigh

Week two of preschool is complete. It went really well for the most part. Except when it comes to a review item. There is one thing we're reviewing that she just hates. Just mentioning the name of the item makes her cry. With tears. For real. The poor, poor dear. I think when we get past what I will call the "training phase" she will be fine and even enjoy it. But at the moment it's a never-ending, tedious nightmare. Ugh!

That photo is tragic, isn't it?

Bible

We're onto letter our letter B verse in My ABC Bible Verses. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9 Avery timely one for a household with two girls who love to bicker. I choose kindness as our Virtue for this week. I might stick with it for next week because Kayleigh has really been struggling to be kind lately.

Math

Our little math trio of Math-U-See, Mathematical Reasoning , and Family Math for Young Children: Comparing has been working out really well for us. This week I traded our Family Math activity for something I saw on pinterest. I put number cards and paint cards in our education cubes and she rolled a number and a color. Then she dot painted the correct number of dots using the correct color with our Do-A-Dot markers. She loved that.

Also please note, her spectacular coloring skills on her MUS page. The best I've ever seen her do. The little minx has been holding out on me. Again. All this time she just scribbles a few scribbles and calls it good. Now that I know she can color neatly...

Language

Naturally we've been doing a lot of reading for our Sonlight core p 4/5. One of our nursery rhymes this week was Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater and the IG suggested making pumpkin pancakes as an extension. Well I didn't feel like standing in the kitchen flipping pancakes but I'm am determined to incorporate more "making memories" activities into our school so I decided to let the girls make pumpkin cookies. One of our favorite fall treats. Yum! So bake them they did and they were delish!!! I helped with the icing because they had lost interest by then. But they were baked to perfection. I give them both an A+!

Notice that Kayleigh discovered a new way to clean the beater. She's nothing if not creative. And determined. lol

And thanks to Michelle over at Delightful Learning. It is her blog that inspires me to spend more time "making memories" instead of stressing over the 3Rs all the time.  She is everything that I wish I could be. But instead of beating myself up for not being as creative or organized as she is, I decided to do better with the personality that I was given. And drool over her blog in-between. She has tons of great ideas. Some of which I'm able to incorporate. Love her!

I am still loving Language Lessons for Little Ones. (Which I discovered over on Michelle's blog, btw.) This week Kayleigh had to do her first narration. And she did a great job. I was so impressed. She choose a story that we had just read in Uncle Wiggily's Story Book, one of our Sonlight read alouds. I still can't believe how well she did. Maybe she's a natural? lol



We still haven't touched the book in Handwriting Without Tears. We're still having a lot of fun playing games that help us get used to the wood pieces. And we did a really fun activity that had us drawing "free style" to classical music. We choose Vivaldi's Four Seasons and had so much fun! Who said handwriting had to be boring and tedious?

Other stuff

This week's Artistic Pursuits' The Way They See It  lesson was on telling a story with your crayon ala Harold and the Purple Crayon. So of course we had to read Harold and the Purple Crayon . Then Kayleigh drew her own crayon adventure about her guinea pigs on a mountain. She was quite pleased with it. lol

Do you know what else I like about this book? It includes a picture study using a famous work of art with each lesson. This, of course, will help with the skill of narrating. Hooray!!!!

And that dear readers was our week. How did your week go? Well I hope!

I'm linking up to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Homeschool Mother's Journal, and Photo College Friday.