tonyandkirsten.org

I can hardly believe it’s been a almost month since I have written a homeschooling update post. Oh wait, yes I can!  During that month we watched the Olympics almost every night for two weeks.  And we did our taxes.  And it got warmer out and it felt like we were doing less school.  I knew I would fall off the weekly or even bi-weekly bandwagon at some point!   Now that I am about to start my quarterly editing work, I thought I better hop back on this bandwagon of writing update posts, lest it become a quarterly update of our homeschooling activities.

Here’s what we’ve been up to in Madeline’s Kindergarten studies:

Bible: We’ve been alternating been the 252 basics lessons and reading from “Leading Little Ones to God.”   This is proving to work out well.  Some of this has been unintentional, as we do tend to lose those little take home sheets from church every now and then.   But other days as I have read through the take home lesson from church, I felt like it didn’t really fit Madeline’s needs very well (such as one lesson that started off, “think about that teacher at school no one likes” or something like that).  And on those days we just read out of the “Leading Little Ones…” book.

Social Studies/Geography: We spent about three weeks studying China. It was fun reading fiction and non-fiction books together and watching a couple of videos.  We worked on a lapbook but didn’t finish it.  The siren call of first warm melty snow and then puddles for splashing made the idea of spending extra time inside coloring, cutting and pasting to be less appealing I think! I may have also chosen lapbook pieces that were too complicated and required too much of me and not enough of her.  I would really like to finish it up, just to say we did it.  We’ll see if that happpens…if it’s going to happen, it will probably mean me staying up some night to do most of it, just leaving a bit of gluing or coloring for Madeline to finish.

We moved to the continent of Europe this week, beginning our study with a lightweight study of Great Britain — essentially just reading a couple of books together.  We’ll study Ireland this next week in conjunction with St. Patrick’s Day!

Phonics/Reading/Handwriting: Madeline continued working on her Explode the Code workbook pages almost daily — this provides for her handwriting practice as well as working on phonics skills.  We also checked out sets #2 and #3 of the BOB Books from the library.  While doing BOB books set #1 proved frustrating to Madeline in the past, she is at the right stage in her skill development right now, and they are perfect! She is learning new phonics skills all over the place, and has said that working on the BOB books is her favorite part of doing school right now.

Math: We are continuing our quick progress in Right Start Math level A.  After making it up to lesson 27 earlier this week, I decided to skip us ahead to lesson 35 so we could continue studying addition — something Madeline is very excited about.  She is actually skipping WAY ahead on her own and trying to figure out how to add two digit numbers and about how the hundreds and thousands places work.  She asked if we could skip ahead to studying addition of numbers in the teens, but I am keeping her working on addition “the right start way”  with the lessons the book presents so we don’t miss out on the cool way this program teaches math.    The lessons we skipped covered geometry and money topics…we’ll go back and cover those after we either finish the addition lessons or when Madeline needs a break from that topics.

Science: Despite my best intentions, we still aren’t doing quite as much science as  I would like.  We did have a blast doing a “solid, liquid, gas” scavenger hunt around the house, and we started the lesson on Air.  We also took advantage of the nicer weather (and Madeline’s curiosity about things she was observing outside) to talk some about seeds and the coming of spring.

Clearly it is well past Monday this week, very late for a menu post… I could have just waited until tomorrow and started with next week, but I was afraid I might not get to it.  I did start writing my Menu Plan Monday post for this past week, but somehow the draft did not get saved, and while I was waiting for time to look for links, the post got lost.

The second half of March is going to be a busy month with Erik’s birthday, a trip to Ames for a wedding and my quarterly editing deadline.  So, I spent the time to write out the next four weeks of menus all at once.   I also put extra effort into getting deals at the grocery store.  As of today I should have pretty much everything I need for the month (other than produce, milk, eggs and coffee) to last me for the rest of the month.   I will also need some extra food for Erik’s birthday party and I will probably make quick trips to Rainbow to double a few coupons on the next couple Wednesdays…but on the whole I am really happy with the fact I have spent just a bit over half of my grocery budget for the month and have enough food to make dinner through the end of the month and even a few days beyond.

Here’s what’s on the menu this week:

Monday (3/8): We had chicken quarters cooked in the crock pot (marinated in Sun Dried Tomato dressing…yum!), make-ahead mashed potatoes from the freezer and carrots.

Tuesday: We had pulled pork sandwiches (freezer leftovers from Kai’s birthday) with coleslaw and sweet potato fries

Wednesday: We had Enchiladas with chips and salsa — one pan of Seafood enchiladas and one pan of Bean and Corn enchiladas (filling is beans, corn, onions, tomato sauce or enchilada sauce, and green chilies if you want it to be spicy).

Thursday: We had Fish Chowder (recipe from crockpot356.blogspot.com) and fresh homemade bread

Friday: We had Chicken Spaghetti Bake (recipe in this post) and broccoli

Saturday: Grill out burgers and hot dogs…yes, it is optimistic but we are going to “welcome spring” with a few friends on Saturday night.

Sunday: It’s Pi(e) day! Get it…3/14…uh, huh.  So, we will have Taco Pie for our main course and some kind of sweet pie for dessert.  Madeline requests Raspberry pie, but I don’t know how that will turn out with frozen raspberries.

Future weeks:

Monday (3/15): Pork loin, baked potatoes, salad or veggie

Tuesday: Chili Bake (from the freezer) and a salad or veggie

Wednesday: It’s St. Patrick’s Day! I’m trying a Corned beef brisket for the first time, served with potatoes and cabbage (maybe served as Colcannon).  And maybe some Irish Soda Bread?

Thursday: Chicken, bean and rice burritos

Friday: A pasta casserole with the Sun Dried Tomato Albacore I got free at Rainbow last week.  No exact recipe…I’ll be making it up as I go along.  Serve with a veggie or salad.

Saturday: Meatloaf and a potato or rice side dish from the freezer w/veggies or salad

Sunday: Erik’s birthday party at lunch (menu TBA), and either leftovers for dinner or maybe Broccoli Cheese Soup.

Monday (3/22): Pork chops and a potato or rice side dish and a veggie or salad

Tuesday: Spaghetti or an Italian Pasta Bake

Wednesday: Curried Chickpeas with rice and maybe Naan.

Thursday: Erik’s birthday…maybe Pizza? Or something else of his choosing.

Friday-Sunday: Trip to Iowa

Monday (3/28): Tacos with ground beef

Tuesday: Chicken Tettrazini (recipe in this post) and a veggie or salad

Wednesday: Pork Roast and a potato or rice side dish with a veggie or salad  (notice all the pork in the menu? Can you tell I used 10 pork coupons recently to stock up when it was on sale a couple times?). 

Thursday: Tator tot casserole

Friday: Chicken Tortilla Soup (recipe from crockpot365.blogspot.com)

By Saturday, April 3rd I am hoping my editing will be finished and I can do Saturday double coupons to start stocking up for April. 

For lots more menu inspiration, visit Menu Plan Monday every week at orgjunkie.com!

If “being taken out to dinner” was a love language, that would definitely be mine.  While I am sure that everyone enjoys a dinner out every now and then, it is something that really makes me feel extra loved and special when Tony takes me out. I enjoy all types of eating out though, whether on a date, with friends, with the whole family or whatever!

So being the bargain hunter that I am, I like to have an arsenal of money-saving strategies to use to make our dining out dollars stretch as far as possible.  Here are some of my favorite ways to save $$$ on eating out:

1. The Entertainment Book: This is a city or region-specific book of coupons you can purchase online or in some brick-n-mortar stores (I purchased mine at Walgreens with a coupon soon after the 2010 edition came out).  They are full of coupons for all kinds of restaurants — everything from McDonald’s to super fancy places and everything in between.  You’ll also get coupons for various stores (I used a $5 off a $25 purchase at Once Upon a Child coupon recently) and various forms of entertainment. The Twin Cities books will get you discounts on indoor playgrounds, bowling, sporting events, rec centers, museums, movie theaters, plays and more.

I just noticed on the Entertainment Book website that all books are 50% off with free shipping — quite a deal since you still have until November 1st to use it! This would make a Twin Cities book $17.50 (prices for other cities may be lower or higher).  You could easily make that back using one or two coupons…so it might be a good option to buy one for any vacation destinations you plan to visit in the next 8 months.

2. “Gift Certificates” from Restaurant.com: Restaurant.com essentially sells coupons that they call “gift certificates” for various restaurants around the country.  I’ve noticed that the list of restaurants here in the Twin Cities has grown quite a bit over the past year or two! While at first glance it doesn’t seem like a super awesome deal — the price listed on the website is $10 for a $25 “gift certificate”, but then an additional $10 or so needs to be spent on top of that — For about the second half of each month certificates are 70% or 80% off.  When you think of buying a coupon for $25 worth of food for $2 or $3, then even that plus an additional $10 (plus tax and tip of course) sounds like a pretty good deal for a nice dinner out.

Be sure to read all the fine print on each restaurant and certificate value you are considering purchasing.  All require some minimum amount to be spent above the certificate value, but it may be more or less depending on the restaurant.  A $50 certificate/coupon to an expensive restaurant may sound great, but if the minimum purchase to use it is $100, it may not work out so well.   Some restaurants may also specify that certain value certificates may only be used at lunch and not dinner or vice versa.  They also may have date exclusions beyond the typical holidays when they are not valid.  For example, one downtown restaurant we purchased a certificate for did not allow them to be used on days where there was an event at the Target center.

3.  Purchasing certificates from “one daily coupon” sites like Groupon or Living Social.  I’m new to this scene, having just purchased my first two “Groupons” recently (and I haven’t used Living Social yet, I just receive their emails).   With these two sites (and there may be others?) you can sign up for a daily email of deals in your city/area.  They are not all dining out related — in fact it might be anything from a massage to a museum membership to a yoga class.  But a lot of them are restaurants of some sort.   Generally you are purchasing a gift certificate or coupon that will have fewer restrictions on it than those from restaurant.com will, and you will get whatever it is for about half price or maybe better.  I got a steal of a deal on a membership to the MN Historical Society, and a $16 certificate to a coffee shop for $8.  If you refer friends to Groupon (yes, that is my referral link above) you can get a $10 credit for each friend that joins and purchases a certificate within a few days of clicking on your referral link.

4.  If you like dining out a chain restaurants (and even some local joints) don’t forget to check their websites for deals and also search “coupon code” sites for printable coupons.  Many chains offer an incentive to sign up for their newsletter (just don’t forget to use your “junk” email address) such as a free dessert or appetizer or even a free entree.   Or coupons may be available for the printing on the restaurant website.  I also recently discovered that some of the same sites one can use to search for discount codes for online retailers (such as couponcabin.com and retailmenot.com) also have sections devoted to restaurant discounts.

5.  Look for other “local deal” sites in your area that may offer special printable coupons or “purchase-a-gift-certificate-for-less” promotions.  The Provisions Book seems to be a newer site in the Twin Cities offering coupons for some areas (with more coming soon).  I found a coupon for a Sushi restaurant there last week when Tony and I wanted sushi on our date night.   Gift certificate deals in the Twin Cities can be found at halfofftwincities.com.  A limited number of gift certificates for various restaurants are sold each week.  I haven’t purchased from here yet, so I can’t comment too much on it, other than to say it looks like another “read the fine print” type of site, as some of the certificates do have restrictions on when and how you can use them.

6.  Finally, Don’t forget to pay attention to coupons in the newspaper and advertising mailers.  These are mostly for chain and fast food places, but every now and then I spot coupons for local establishments as well.  Even if I am not planning to eat at a particular pizza joint, fast food restaurant or chain restaurant in the next few weeks, I generally save some of these coupons anyway “just in case”…because that’s just the kind of person I am.  While I don’t make it a habit to eat a lot of fast food, we do eat that kind of fare more often on the road, so I try and remember to bring some with me when we leave town.

I’m linking up today with “Frugal Fridays” at Lifeasamom.com. Visit this week’s Frugal Fridays post to learn more great ways to save money!

I guess it is “better late than never” this week.    At least it is still Monday for a little bit longer.  I am really getting in the groove of planning my menu based mostly on what I have already in the house, and putting any meals that need extra ingredients I don’t have on hand into the second half of the week, after I have had a chance to do some grocery shopping.

In general my pantry/freezer are looking more full than they have in a while.  I am trying to get better about applying the “stocking up” principle of buying enough of an item when it is at a rock-bottom sale price to get me through until the next rock-bottom sale price.  My general tendency has been to only buy one or two of something when it is on sale.  But with a family of five eager eaters, “one or two” of almost anything does not last for very long (well, at least four of the five are eager.  Calling Erik “eager” to eat would be a bit of an exaggeration these days as he sometimes seems to be eating less than Kai!).

So, instead of buying the 4 frozen containers of juice with one coupon this past week (enough juice to last two weeks, max), I bought 12 containers of juice and used three coupons.  Maybe that will get us through the next 4-6 weeks until I can make another sale/coupon pairing.  A few weeks ago I bought 9 bags of frozen veggies for a total of $3.   There are still a few left, and it has been so great to not worry about running out of peas, corn or green beans.  And you can bet that the next time I see ground beef “reduced for quick sale” at $1.49/lb I won’t just buy one 5 lb package like I did last time (and now I am dying for a sale on ground beef!) but I will buy two or three if the budget will allow.

I also need to take better advantage of the rock bottom produce sale prices on veggies when Aldi offers them.   I got a 5lb bag of potatoes on sale pretty inexpensively this past week at Rainbow, so today I made a batch of Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes.  The next time sweet potatoes are on sale I will buy multiple packages and freeze some mashed sweet potatoes.  If onions and peppers go on sale, I will make Fajita kits to put in the freezer.   Ditto for fruit when it gets to be the time of year where fruit that’s worth freezing (like berries) are on sale.

Here’s what I have planned for this week:

Monday: Tonight we had beef roast (on sale + coupon last week at Super Target), mashed potatoes, and asparagus

Tuesday: Buffalo Chicken Spaghetti (and maybe some non-spicy Spaghetti for the kids if I take pity on their lack of liking to eat spicy food!) and salad or frozen veggies

Wednesday: Pork chops (sale + coupon last week at SuperTarget — still waiting for an awesome sale to use the rest of my stash of pork coupons!) and a rice/veggie side dish from the freezer

Thursday: Creamy Beef and Noodles (similar to Beef Stroganoff, and based on the recipe from crockpot365.blogspot.com). I’ll be trying out using leftover beef from dinner tonight, plus some other leftover cooked beef roast from the freezer…plus a veggie or salad

Friday: Chicken Tortilla Soup and quesidillas

Saturday: Chinese beef and broccoli (recipe held over from last week — we at pizza with friends instead) and cream cheese wontons

Sunday: Either Fajitas or Enchiladas…depending on what deals come my way this week.

For lots more menu inspiration, visit Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com!

It’s already time for the last Menu Plan Monday for February.   February always goes by quickly since it is the shortest month, but with Kai’s birthday and Valentines Day to celebrate and the Olympics to watch, it feels even shorter than usual.  Here’s what I have on the menu this week.  I am once again able to make most of my meals from what’s in my fridge/freezer/pantry.  I am really enjoying having most of what I need already on hand when the week begins, then looking forward to the next week as I do my grocery shopping mid-week.

Monday: Chicken and dumplings (recipe from crockpot365.blogspot.com)

Tuesday: Italian Pasta Bake with ground turkey (essentially pasta tomato or spaghetti sauce, ground turkey, cheese and seasonings)

Wednesday: Homemade Pizza

Thursday: ground beef Tacos

Friday: Broccoli Cheese soup and homemade bread

Saturday: Date Night!

Sunday: Chinese beef and broccoli and maybe homemade cream cheese wontons or another Chinese appetizer.

For more great menu ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com!

Today, these were the faces of homeschooling in the Gold House:

There should also be a picture of a Kindergartener with a frustrated look on her face, but I figured she might be even more unhappy with me if I took a picture of her in that state.

I usually try and stay positive in my homeschooling week-in-review posts.  Sure, I note what didn’t go so well, but it doesn’t necessarily capture the fact that we have some bad days.  Sometimes more than one of them in the same week.

This is going to be a short school week for us as it is — we took the day off on Monday since Tony had a work holiday for President’s Day and my mom also stopped by for a couple of hours.  And we had our co-op on Wednesday.  That left Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for school.

Tuesday started off okay with Bible reading and reading about Abraham Lincoln (a belated choice of reading material for President’s Day).  Then Madeline really struggled with her attitude while we were working on phonics.  I thought maybe the problem was the materials I was using — we were trying out a book from the library to see if it might work well in tandem with Explode the Code.  We never got any other school work done after that.

Fast forward to today.  I decided we would return to Explode the Code.  So, after Bible reading and a book about China (which Madeline acted much more bored about than usual) we pulled out the ETC workbooks, which Madeline has for the most part enjoyed the last two weeks.  Not so much today.  I think it took us over an hour to get through some material that should have taken about 15 minutes.  It wasn’t even a new concept — just reinforcing words we’ve already been working on.  But attitude is everything and hers was just not helpful today.  Luckily, she pulled through it and we did move on to working on Math for the first time this week.

Meanwhile, Kai did a bunch of screaming, as you can see in his picture above.  He did take a nap in the middle of our school time this morning (thank God for that!), but was still crabby whether in my arms or playing on the floor when he woke up again.  Erik, on the other hand, was making things difficult in his own way.  He wasn’t too interested in Tot School or participating with Madeline and I today.  For the most part he just played.  But he is supposed to be working on using the potty without needing “company”.  He says he needs help, but really the “helper” just sits and talks with him.  I did talk him into going to the potty a couple times without me needing to sit next to him the whole time.  But getting him to put his pants back on was another story.   As much as I didn’t want to take my focus off Madeline while she was having such a hard time, I had to spend time training Erik in what completing the process of using the potty means — a.k.a putting one’s clothes back on afterwords.

We finally made it through our morning of school.  The kids played sweetly together while I made lunch and then after lunch, including a nice tea party and playing house (for some reason Erik’s “house” was in the bathroom, and they were having a slumber party):

~Erik is 34 Months Old~

We’ve had some fun Tot School times the past couple of weeks! I think we’re finding a balance that works for us of Erik sometimes joining in to the best of his ability with what Madeline is doing, sometimes doing his own “tot school work” alongside Madeline and other times just playing and doing his own thing during our school time.  And every now and then while Madeline is taking a break or doing work independently, I can work one-on-one with Erik.  While I would love to do more of this, it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards right now.

Math is still Erik’s favorite subject to “join in” with.  And why not? Math manipulatives are so much fun, and he loves exploring numbers and counting:

Art is another favorite activity we have not done as much of lately, and Erik requested coloring (and then cutting) and painting this past week:

Erik and I did get a chance for just the two of us to play Cariboo this week:

We had our “Game Day” on Friday, and Erik participated whole-heartedly…even in games he didn’t fully know how to play, like sight word bingo.

It’s hard to believe, but it won’t be long before I am thinking up “tot school” activities for Kai.  Even now, I am realizing that the reason he has been whining more frequently during school time is that he gets bored! I am working on setting aside a few toys that I will only get out for him during school time.  He really likes manipulating the pieces of these jumbo-sized puzzles:

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly tot school link-up at 1+1+1=1!

We had a really fun week doing school this past week…here’s what we’ve been up to:

Bible: Last week I mentioned that I missed some of the other Bible materials we read last semester since we have been focusing on the take home lessons from 252 basics this semester.  Well, I “got my wish” this week.  I stayed home from church with the boys a week ago Sunday since Erik was sick…and the 252 basics take home lessons never made it into my hands.  So, we read a couple chapters from “Leading Little Ones to God”  and we did some lessons out of “My See, Point, and Learn Bible book“.  This book is more on Erik’s level, but Madeline enjoys it too…so it is fun to do with them together.

Math: We worked on lessons 13-16 in RightStart Math this week.  Besides practicing abacus skills, the main new concept we practiced was even and odd numbers.  While i had briefly mentioned this concept before, it was really fairly new to Madeline. We used math tiles and “dot cards” to help visualize whether each number between one and ten was even or odd:

Madeline also really enjoyed the games in this week’s lesson, including dot card memory, a “comes after” game that was similar to “war”, and dot card bingo.

Reading/Phonics: We continued using Explode the Code (ETC) books 1.5 and 2 this week.  I am still really happy with my choice on these books.  Since starting the explode the code books we covered double letter word endings (words that end in combos like -dd, -ss, and so on) and we’ve started covering some two letter beginning blends.  I’ve also been trying to find simple “easy reader” books from the library for Madeline to read.  She still needs some help here and there, but I can definitely see improvement in her abilities.  Here she is hard at work on one of her ETC pages:

Geography: We completed our study of India this week.  We did all of our planned reading (I linked to the titles in last week’s wrap up post) on Monday, then worked on our lapbook on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Madeline and I decided to do a double lapbook to cover the continent of Asia — with one folder each for China and India.   We got the India section of the lapbook about 95% finished.  We just need to add some pictures of the animals we learned about from India (elephants, tigers, monkeys, etc) and a picture for the title flap.  I didn’t take pictures yet — I’ll post pictures of the whole thing once we do the China section.

Science: We finally started “Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding” (BFSU)!  I seriously considered skipping lesson A/B-1, since the topic of organizing and classifying sounded so basic.  But, upon further reflection, I thought that it would be a good subject to discuss and be able to refer back to in the future.  Both Madeline and Erik really enjoyed an “observation skills” activity that demonstrated how it was easier to remember the contents of a tray filled with objects when the contents were sorted into various categories, versus when they were scattered on the tray randomly.

We also started discussing lesson A-2, which is on the states of matter (solid, liquid and gas).  This is a review for Madeline to some extent because we covered this topic last fall.   We’ll do a little bit more with lesson A-2 this coming week and possibly start lesson A-3 (on the topic of Air) as well.  Once we get past lesson A-3 I think we will try out the weekly schedule rotation I wrote about in my post introducing BFSU.

“Game Day”: Since we had neither a field trip or our co-op this week, I planned a “game day” for us on Friday.  We worked on educational games like those in our math curriculum and some sight word games, and we played a couple of board games from our game cabinet.  I also gave Madeline and Erik each a chance to make up their own game.  Erik’s game was called crown soccer and involved playing soccer in the playroom and living room with a tiny soft soccer ball:

And Madeline’s game involved some homemade paper dolls playing soccer:

“Game Day” was super fun and I think it’s something we will do again in the future!

It’s time for another Menu Plan Monday! Here’s what I have planned this week.  I’m again trying to work mostly off of what I have purchased on sale previous weeks, then adding a few things here and there to complete each meal (plus buying new sale items to use in future weeks).  I am hoping this will lead to lower overall costs:

Monday: Shrimp & pork stir fry and egg rolls (pork leftover from last week’s tenderloin; shrimp on sale at cub this week)

Tuesday: baked Chicken (leg quarters bought on sale last week for 39 cents/lb!), mashed potatoes, and a veggie or salad.

Wednesday: Beef roast (bought on sale + coupon at Target a week or so ago) with Broccoli Rice casserole

Thursday: Chicken Tetrazzini  and a veggie or salad (menu item held over from last week — we had pizza at the Children’s museum one night last week instead of eating dinner at home). I’ve posted my Tetrazzini recipe in a previous MPM entry.

Friday: Date night! Yeah for another date! Kids will eat pizza or mac and cheese.

Saturday: Black Bean soup and quesidillas

Sunday: Meatloaf (I make mine approximately like this) and baked potatoes and a veggie or salad

For lots more great menu ideas, visit this week’s Menu Plan Monday link-up at orgjunkie.com!

I wrote a couple posts earlier about two curriculum changes we’re making for science and phonics.  Here’s what Madeline and I have been up to in general for the past couple of weeks during her Kindergarten studies.

Bible: We’re continuing to work on the memory verses from church and read through the take-home devotionals from the 252 Basics.  Since there are four of those per week and we usually only do 4 days of school per week, this hasn’t left a lot of time for other Bible readings, like “Leading Little Ones to God” (which I have missed the last two weeks when we haven’t read it).  I’m still pondering what to do about this.  The 252 Basics devotionals are short, but Madeline usually seems ready to move on to other subjects after we have finished one.

Math: We’re now through (I think) the first 12 lessons of Right Start Math level A. Madeline is improving at using the Abacus and being able to quickly enter or identify any number from 1-10.  Most of the other material in the lessons is still review for her, so we are able to get through one (or sometimes even a bit more than one) lesson per day.  She is really looking forward to getting past the review section and getting on to something other than just the Abacus being new and challenging.  But since using the abacus and visualizing quantities is so important to this curriculum, I don’t want to skip any lessons.  She’ll just have to be patient a bit longer. 

Phonics/Reading: As I mentioned in my other entry, Madeline finished Level 1 of Alphabet Island.  Yeah! We’ll be moving on to using Explode the Code books 1 1/2 and 2…and you can read more about that in my recent entry on the subject.

Geography: We started studying the continent of Asia, and specifically the country of India the last two weeks.  I had hoped to spend no more than two weeks per country that we plan to study. But due to only having seven days of school in the past two weeks with Madeline visiting Grandma during week #17 and restarting our co-op this past week (and some other distractions on days we did do school), we didn’t get as much done as I was hoping to. So, we’ll continue to work on India this week as well.  So far for our India study we have read the chapters in Hero Tales about Amy Carmichael (a missionary to India), a folktale and a couple of non-fiction books about what India is like today.  This week we will read another folktale (from this book), a picture book story, and a “Magic Treehouse” book that takes place in India.  We’ll also make a couple of lapbook pieces for a lapbook about the whole continent of Asia.

Science: Okay, so I slacked and we didn’t get science done.    I had planned to not do science during week #17 since we only did three days of school that week.  Then I held off preparing for science this past week until late in the week, and then by Friday we had other distractions and we just did the basics, skipping the science lesson.  We’ll remedy that this week and start having a block for science planned in earlier in the week!

For fun: Madeline (and Erik) really enjoyed making valentines almost every day this week!: