Week 10 - Elephants & Pilgrims ;)

So 4 more assignments, and week 10 is a wrap. We were out of the house and out of sorts this week and seem to be dragging along finishing assignments! Between my naps and a series of catastrophes this week, I'm shocked we're actually almost done! hahaha

This week, our air conditioning went out, our van battery died, we had a mouse in the kitchen, my mother got remarried, I've had false labor EVERY night, and my pregnancy insomnia has been horrible so I've been napping a lot during the daytime. My kids have been having a WONDERFUL, wonderful time playing together, though. There have been many times that I've thought about pulling DD away from playing to "do school", but I decide against it because I love that she is having such a blast with her brother. Also, she's ONLY 4! I remind myself of this a lot because I want her to enjoy being a kid and enjoy school. There's no need to stress her out about it and I'd rather not stress about it either.

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So since I am so close to my due date, I have been thinking about ways to modify our schedule to accomodate DD and DS. First, DD *loves* to do activities...particularly cutting and pasting activities! I finally decided to just bite the bullet and purchase some workbooks for her. We LOVED the "I Can Cut!" and "I Can Draw!" books I'd purchased at Sam's last year, so I checked it out online and found that they have an "I Can Paste!" book. YES!!!! Where there is pasting, there IS cutting! haha

I purchased:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0769653723 (I bought 2 so that DS can have one as well...he has shown a great interest in being a part of our schooling.)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933241020
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4774307084
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933241292
and then a Telling Time book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933241276


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I also decided that for next week's planned curriculum, I would try a new approach. I have 18 books/videos from the library that have to do with our Week 11 themes. The themes are "Fish" and "Feelings" and the books are awesome! DD is going to be ecstatic! Anyway, in each book or video (the only video is one about Rainbow Fish), I am tucking in one assignment from the week's curriculum. For example, in one book, I have a piece of writing practice paper with the letters A-E on there and the numbers 6-9 for her to practice each about 3 times. Another book has a front and back math worksheet tucked in. Another one has instructions to do a Happy collage.

Besides just the activities in the books (and reading them, of course!), I plan on completing at least 3 pages of Explode the Code with her and 4 reading lessons per week. I'm prepared for the possibility that I'll have my baby this week and that Week 11 will span over 2 weeks (even with someone else helping me out with the schooling) or even more and I'm okay with that! I think this will be less stressful for me and for the person(s) helping me than having 9 daily bags to complete!

I'm going to place the stack of books in the place of the workbox so DD can just pick a book/activity and get started. :) She and her brother have learned a LOT through the books we've read, so I'm convinced that this will be a great idea!! I don't feel that she'll get behind in her studies and I also think she'll feel satisfied with the amount and type of activities since she loves school so much.



This was all very long-winded, but I wanted to post what's going on around here! :) Thanks for checking in!