Review of our 1st week of school

Overall, this 1st week went pretty well. We didn't stick entirely to our schedule due to some unexpected circumstances. But for the most part, except for music and a handwork project I had planned, we got most of what we wanted done.

What is going particularly well is language study. This year J and W are learning 2 languages, Chinese and Spanish and a tiny bit of Latin from CC. I have decided I will be teaching them both to the kids at home. For Chinese, we have been learning anywhere from 8-12 words/few phrases of their choosing on most days and their retention has been pretty good. The nice thing is they really seem to enjoy it esp. the little competition with each other. As far as Spanish, I can't tell you how getting a few stickers become the main motivation for learning the words. Of course, singing songs help too. We are using Collins Spanish Club currently.

Another resource we have been enjoying in the morning is Games Children Play and Yoga Pretzels when we do our movement. We also kicked off science with some trepidation from me.

For math practice, we use a resource called MATH IT which is really good practice for the kids. This is mostly practice for mastery. They have add, double/half, multiply, but no subtraction problems. So we made our own subtractions cards this week and began practicing that as well. For example, "add it" have 29 addition problems (range from simple like 5+5 to little more tricky 5+9) and they need to place it on the board in under a minute.

Something unusual and "dangerous" thing the kids did this week was spending the night outside by themselves on our enclosed deck. This was inspired by the book "Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)" by G Tulley with J Spiegler. While they were very excited about it, it left me concerned. But this is something they read in the book and wanted to try out.

That's our 1st week in a nut shell. I should also mention both kids seem to enjoy the fables/saints stories so I'm happy about that too. I also tried it on another child who says he "hates" listening to stories (but likes reading), and he also liked it which is huge. So there you go! :)