Week In Review 10/14

In our homeschool this week:



We began our school week on Sunday this week.  It was a fun school day and not planned.  We got the Scientific Explorer's My First Dinosaur Science Kit out that I had purchased for Evan’s birthday party that was supposed to have a dinosaur theme, but we didn’t have the party.  With all that’s been going on, we just haven’t been able to do it.  Last week Evan kept asking to dig for dinosaurs and I just was in too much pain to do it and I would tell him “hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow so we can maybe do it.”  Well, Sunday came and I just didn’t have the heart to say no again so I grabbed it and set it up for him…you should have seen the smile on his face.  I had every intention of pushing through the pain to do this with him…little did I know that it would take hours to dig out the bones.  Thankfully my mom was here so she supervised through part of it.  He loved it and I thought it was quite fun (minus the pain).  The kit has a couple of other projects that we have yet to do…another day.  I didn’t read the lessons about dinosaurs because, well, I won’t get into that.  Let’s just say that I disagree on some of the facts .  Nevertheless, I would definitely give this kit for the excavation part alone.  The kit also includes a glow in the dark build your own dinosaur and one of those little dinos that you put in water and watch  grow.  With the excavation part came safety goggles, excavation tools and the brick with the bones in it.  We really enjoyed this and it provided hours of fun for my little man.  I do recommend that instead of digging on newspaper, use a baking dish (or in our case a plastic disposable storage dish) to minimize the mess.  Another thing to note is that it seemed a little less messy and easier to dig when it was pretty wet (not too wet or it would be mud) but wet enough to keep it from becoming powder.

		Digging for dinosaur bones VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We worked on our week 2 lesson plan (from September, we’re a month behind and you can read about why HERE.) You can view our lesson plan HERE.  I am amazed that we were actually able to complete this week’s lessons given the fact that the steroid meds I had in my system to reduce pain have been dwindling away but I don’t want to fall even further behind on school.  So far I haven’t had to make any adjustments to my plan as far as curriculum is concerned which really surprises me. What we have now seems to be a good fit (you can view our entire curric. list and lesson plans HERE.) We’ll see as we continue through the year and the lessons get more difficult if it’s still a good fit. Our total time to complete all of our lessons (from curric.) works out to about 1 – 1 1/2 hours/day (not including read aloud and other “unplanned” learning). This has been very doable for Evan.
Literature:
We skipped the planned literature reading again…still haven’t made it to the library but we have plenty of other books here at home.  We did manage to fit in a couple of chapters in our Chronicles of Narnia series.   
Developmental/Readiness Skills:
A couple of things that I noticed during his readiness skills lesson on Tuesday from Developing the Early Learner: Level 1 were that the visual/memory 1 was REALLY easy for him and the motor/hand-eye 1 wasn’t so easy for him. I believe this has a lot to do with his lazy eye as he kept complaining that he couldn’t see very well during the tracing exercise.  He tried the M/HE 3 times each with a different color of marker and each time he improved quite a bit.  I used this “teachable moment” to explain to him the importance of practice and how the more one works on something (practice) the better one’s ability becomes.  He also did a splendid job on his Auditory/Memory 1 and Comprehension/Sequence 1.
Singapore Essentials K-A:
The focus this week was on Shapes, Patterns and Length.  Length was by far Evan’s favorite.  He enjoyed measuring everything!  I will say that I skipped some of the suggested-but-not-required extra steps to some of the lessons when it was obvious that no extra work was necessary for him to get the point. 
Evan made a request on Thursday to work with the MFW Number Puzzle Boards and Pegs so we did that after our "planned" work was finished.
Language Arts (SWR):
We are a little behind on writing the clock letters.  This week we did a,c & d.  We did them on the dry-erase board instead of using corn meal in a pan…I didn’t feel like adding any extra cleaning this week.  I’ll try to think of a different way to do it next week.  
Bible:
We are up-to-date on our lessons.  I really love the way Devotions for the Childrens Hour reads and the lessons it gives.  Evan doesn’t lose interest.  I had him pray instead of me prior to our lesson one day (can’t remember which day) and grandma heard and was quite impressed with how he prayed .
Character Building:
I feel the same way about Child's Book of Character Building: Growing Up in God's World - At Home, at School, at Play, Book 1 as I feel about D4CH.  The lessons are short and easy  for Evan to understand.  I guide him through narrating them back to me by asking him questions.  He’s definitely paying attention…which is funny as his first lesson was about being attentive .

School Work VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing:
I FINALLY went to the spine doc and found out my back’s fate.  Next week, at some point (the appt. hasn’t been made yet as we are awaiting approval from insurance) I have to get a steroid injection (one on each side of the spine) which really freaks me out, followed by 4 weeks of physical therapy.  If that doesn’t work, the next option is surgery .  It’s supposed to be an out-patient thing but in my mind, surgery is surgery.  I. Don’t. Want. It!  The doc said my chances are 50/50 . 
On another note, the doc said that my back problem has nothing to do with my hip problem so I need to see an orthopedic surgeon to figure out what’s wrong with my hip, sigh.
Grandma & Papa and Nana spent a lot of time at our house this week again…helping out.  Here’s a picture of Owen walking in grandma’s shoes for a day:

My favorite thing this week was:
I have a couple.
Refer to the above mentioned dinosaur digging project.  It was great fun and I loved seeing how excited Evan was every time he “unearthed” a new bone.
Another favorite moment (actually two) was when Owen (16 months old) gave me a kiss and a hug on separate occasions without my asking for it .
I’m grateful for:
I can’t say it enough.  I am soooooo thankful for all of the help that we’ve received these past couple of months from family and friends!  We really have no idea how we would have made it through this without them.
I’m praying for:
NO SURGERY on my back please…among many other things.

Just wanted to finish with this…it’s my favorite time of year:




















This post is linked to No Ordinary Blog Hop,
 Preschool Corner,  Hip Homeschool Hop, & Living Life Intentionally Linky Party .