Our first two weeks of school.

I'm so happy to say that our school year got off to a pretty good start! The first book of the year was "How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World" by Marjorie Priceman. What a fun book! We got to "visit" many countries so the first thing we did was to make passports. We got to borrow Jason's and the girls enjoyed examining it.

We ended the week by making an apple pie (of course). The two big girls helped measure the ingredients and assemble the pie. I don't really do a lot of baking and had never made an apple pie before either (if we are going to eat dessert then the girls and I prefer chocolate and Jason is not a huge fan of pies). It turned out to be so good I think we'll make one from time to time!




























The second week we did "Clown of God" by Tomie dePaola. Good story but kind of heavy--it dealt with a lot of social issues (orphans, mean people, homelessness, etc). We spent time talking about why some people feel like they have to be mean and how much it hurts others when they aren't treated with respect. We also made a list of things we are thankful for. We learned how to say "thank you" and "good bye" in Italian. And we watched a few videos of jugglers on youtube (we found a video of a teenager who could juggle knives while riding on a unicycle!!). The girls tried to juggle--each tried it exactly once before they decided that juggling was a lot more difficult than it looked :)

Our routine seems to be working pretty well. I decided that doing school five days a week is a little much at this time--especially for the new kindergartner. She loves her special portion of school ( phonics) but I noticed she was getting a little burnt out when we did three days in a row. In the future I plan on doing different lessons (besides Sing, Spell, Read, and Write and possibly Five in a Row) on Wednesdays and possibly Fridays. Hopefully this will keep things from getting monotonous. That is the last thing I want--for anyone to dread school. We've got several projects that I'd like to do this fall--raising butterflies/moths for example.

Oh this week we are OFF. Monday was lost to a holiday and Wednesday Paige had an afternoon of pre op stuff for her finger surgery next week. This morning we had to be down at Childrens Hospital for for Reese's check up with her gastro doctor. Plus the baby has had a bit of a cold and has been a bit cranky and needing more Mom time :) But next week we'll be ready to get back into the swing of things!