What we've accomplished, what had better be accomplished by schools end tomorrow!

I lost the chord that hooks my camera up to the computer :(  Until I find it I can't post any of the videos or pictures that I've taken....

Jocelyn...  nothing on the French front.  It's her birthday week (she's 13 augh!) and she requested a vacation.  Which really means three weeks off, because (against my better judgement) we're taking the next two weeks off.

Andrew has nearly finished Story of the World Vol. 2.  I'm not too worried if we fall a chapter or two short, we can read those over vacation with very little argument.  He has done two weeks worth of science.  Everything else is either on schedule or way ahead.  He finished all of his library books by Wednesday, so for reading for right now, he's in the encyclopedia.  Today, he's reading the entry on Christmas.  Tomorrow, I'll think we'll look up the nativity.  He's enjoyed his writing work from my little Christmas book so much that he's read half the book.  That's great, except it's really narrowing down what I have to use for writing.  We found Latina Christian I Pronunciation CD.  I did not even know we had that!  Neither of us were really impressed with it though, and while I may add some listening time to Tuesdays, I can't imagine using it overly much.

Luke's work is really so...  uneven.  We had done two of the three chapters we aimed for this week, but he still will not read out of OPGtTR.  So, today I wrote and cut out letters for cat, rat, hat, sat, fat, and bat from index cards, using the lined side to regulate letter size.  Then I cut out 'word papers' from construction paper, rectangles just big enough to fit three letters on with a little extra room to frame them.  I searched high and low, but could not find pictures for bat, cat, or rat in any of my magazines.  Unbelievable, I know.  I drew pictures for those three, but cut out pictures for the rest.  Then, I handed Luke one letter at a time and he would identify the letters and say what they stand for.  Next, he would glue them onto a word paper and sound out the word he had created.  After that he would match it to a picture and then glue both onto yet another sheet of paper.  After we'd finished the words I had him read them a second time and he earned a star for each word he read correctly.  Of course, every word got a star, because we would just go back and try again on the ones he had a problem with.  For some reason, he wants to say "fast" instead of "fat"?  I was so proud of him.  I really thought my little project was too hard and something I would end up doing for/with him.  Instead, he did most of the work himself and, except for some assistance with "r" and "s," he did all the sounding out himself too!  With all that, he's done absolutely no math this week.  I'm planning on working on that tomorrow.  We DID cover the tower of Babel, but haven't done anything extra for it.  Luke's spent most of this week playing here and here, and yesterday he took on this project (with a lot of Mom assistance) and created a beautiful snowflake!

Searching for things for Luke to do online I found these sites.  He enjoyed them for a few minutes and I hope you and yours will too!

Mostly Mommy

Sesame

Noggin

Fischer Price

BBC

Things we MUST do by tomorrow.  Jo, sigh...  just stop growing for a few minutes.  Drew, keep on as he's going.  Luke, math and some more review of the days of the week.

Me, uh every thing else.