Have you ever had weeks like this? Weeks where you feel you accomplished nothing-zilch-nada (or, in Latin, nihil)?
That would be the kind of week we had. Not only that, but it’s taken me almost an entire week to write about it.
The reality is that we did accomplish some stuff, even in a week when I feel like we didn’t. For instance, we had three school days completely tied up in all-day rehearsals and performances.
But that left us with only one day for our “normal” school work. And any week you have just one day for “normal” school work, it’s not a very “normal” school day. (At least that’s our experience.)
Matter of fact, it was this week that I decided that some of our scheduled reading will be best-suited for Christmas break.
The current plan is to come back to Everything You Need to Know about American History Homework, A Presidential Scrapbook, and Star-Spangled State Book during Christmas break. For us, it will be better to use these as a review during November and December (and beyond).
This week, we switched our reading plan a bit to accommodate for our crazy drama schedule.
We decided to set aside The Cabin Faced West for now due to time constraints and instead used Phoebe the Spy as our family read aloud (which was read partly by me, partly by Stephen). On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “I didn’t like it” to 5 being “I loved it”) David rated it 1,000. David also read George Washington And The General’s Dog (not pictured because I have already misplaced it) and George Washington — Soldier, Hero, President out loud. Stephen’s independent reading included Guns for General Washington: A Story of the American Revolution (which he is still working on because he was distracted by other reading material, like the new Answers in Genesis magazine he found in the mailbox). We read A Picture Book of George Washington and about half of If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution, which we’ll come back to later in the year when we memorize the Preamble and Bill of Rights. We also had a Magic School Bus book, but now I’m not sure if we actually read it. (Perhaps these memory lapses are due to lack of sleep? Isaac just started teething, and we’ve had a few rough nights. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Gary gets home Thursday!)
On Monday (our only “normal’ school day for the past two weeks), we started using Comic Illustration Pages…
…and a quick new multiplication drill sheet. {You can learn more about this and download the drill sheet here.}
I also started using Timeline Thumbnails because I have struggled so much with memorizing timeline. {Learn about what this is and download a Timeline Thumbnail Template here.}
David continued practicing the states & capitals with our states & capitals file folder game.
And that’s about it! After two weeks of juggling the Homeschool Dramatic Society, we cranked back up our “normal” routine with these few activities and our core work (math + language arts).
Now that we’ve had two weeks off, I’m ready to have a week off. Thank goodness fall break is just around the corner!