Week 5 In Review

Oliver, a.k.a. "The Exterminator"

Are we at week 5 already?  I can hardly believe it.  This week has flown by with its ups and downs, but it was a good week, and tomorrow is Classical Conversations.  Molly has had a cold, but aside from one rough night with a bit of croup and general stuffy-nose-ness, we fared okay.

What made the week so stellar was the fact that Matty knuckled down and did his independent work, well, INDEPENDENTLY.  Wow. What a difference that made. We also figured out that "Math With Dad" is way fun.  They made a line graph of silver prices over the course of 2010, which is an area of interest to both those guys. Glen and I decided that a weekly homework assignment with Dad is going to be an institution, and Matty is excited about it.  We'll revisit it in a few weeks and see if they still feel the same.  Another thing that was a major improvement was the deal I made with Molly to only require her to cover a page of her Pathway Reader per day.  She thought that she could handle that...Today she read three.  Matty has finished his "mini-book" (I feel like it's more than a tome) on famous kings of the middle ages.  He will begin working on "The Plague" and "Religion" and "The Feudal System" in the next week.  Hopefully now things will start moving a little faster.  So history was good this week, math was good, writing, and spelling was good, science was, well...interesting...

when the cat brought a freshly killed shrew up on the deck this morning and was tossing it around.  He tossed it over the edge down to the ground and the kids immediately left their cereal in their bowls to see what would happen.  Both fascinated and a bit horrified, they watched the feline completely (and I mean completely) consume the rodent.  Molly reported that there was "a lot of crunching when he ate the head" and that she "nearly threw up when he ate the eyeballs, Mom."  Yeah...well there's a reason I didn't participate in that lab.  Matty described the experience in less graphic terms to protect my squeamish sensibilities, I think, but reported that he felt like he had witnessed something amazing.  They both just chalked it up to the cycle of life.  That's great, but somehow they were grossed out when I severed the neck of the chicken that they ate for dinner last evening.  I don't get it.   "EWWW--Is that BONE there, Mom?  And Blood?  EWWW!"  (Give me a break.  That was one delicious chicken.)

Normally on the weekly report I try to summarize what it was that I learned even more than what the children did.  This week was peaceful...the kids were pleasant to be with and cheerful about their school work.  I made a point not to stress over time, but just worked with the kids until the goals were met, and miraculously we even finished up a bit early.  Intentionality is a word that keeps coming up, and when I am intentional about our goals and communicate clearly with them about what I have planned for the week, things seem to fall into place, even if it's not exactly the way I intend or expect.

In the cooking department,  I learned not to mess with Jamie Oliver's roasted chicken recipe.  Yum.  :-)  And that's all I have to say about this week.