My Valentines, THMJ Feb. 18, 2012

My Valentines, English Grammar, & 

Time with Daddy!

In my life this week…

My dear husband stopped and took time out of his busy day to order a surprise for each of his girls on Valentine's Day!  He is going through an extremely difficult time at work, so it was a great surprise that he took the time to remember us in this way.  My daughter was just thrilled!  My kids also surprised me with chocolates and cards - it is fun that they are big enough to think of doing that on their own now!  I love surprises!  It was a long, busy week, but my husband finally got the weekend off!  His first since we flew back from Walt Disney World over a month ago!  Until this weekend, he had had one day off since January 14!  We enjoyed having time together!

 In our homeschool this week…

We began our research reports about a historical figure from the Revolutionary War era.  J is re-reading a book that he enjoyed earlier in the year and writing about Thomas Jefferson.  He found out that Thomas Jefferson supposedly brought macaroni and cheese to America from France and that immediately made President Jefferson one of my son's favorite historical people!  B chose to learn more about Martha Washington and she has been writing about this brave woman who traveled to be with her husband several times during the War.  This is a large project for us to do in this first year of IEW writing curriculum, so I guided them through the process, but allowed them to dictate their ideas to me this week as I typed to speed up the process.  They are still learning as I "model" this complicated process of selecting what is the important information, writing key word outlines, fusing outlines from multiples sources together, and then writing the information in a creative and interesting way! Whew! That is a lot to handle!

We are learning so much every week with our Classical Conversations memory work, reading and spelling lessons, history, maps, geography, Latin, science, math, and piano lessons.  We are at the point in the year where some of our materials are racing ahead of where we are ready to go and so we are stopping to master important information before moving on.  We are doing that in handwriting, reviewing all the letters in both upper and lower case, this week.  We have also taken a step back while working on our English grammar, reviewing some important information from the beginning of our school year and using index cards to master the information, instead of copying the chart again and again.  "Building" the chart in this kinesthetic way works better for my dysgraphic son and it's fun for my daughter, too.  We also worked on a new sentence pattern together on the white boards.  It seems to take the pressure off of both children to simplify our practice to just the most important topics and to not worry about all of the new information that was presented in class this week.  I also had a great discussion with my hubby about his own learning style and it helped me to understand how to work with my son's current school challenges.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

B and Daddy traveled to an IU basketball game on Wednesday and cheered the Hoosiers onto a victory!  We had normal rehearsals, church, lessons, and school the rest of the week. J did not have a basketball game this Saturday, so we had a relaxing day and it was fun to simply be together - all four of us!  After church on Sunday, we visited the Boat, Sport, & Travel Show in Indianapolis and met D's twin brother and his family there.  It was great to spend some time with them.  The kids all tried the Climbing Wall.  J made it up to the top and B made it about halfway in socks, because they had no climbing shoes.  Then we had an awesome supper at Fogo de Chao!  My husband has been wanting to take us there for two years or longer and it just worked out today.  I am still stuffed!

J and B climb the wall

The kids and D look ready to ride!

I'm inspired by...

I am still keeping up on my Good Morning Girls Bible study of the book of Ephesians. Check out their blog posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to gain some encouragement and inspiration!  

I’m praying for…

Baby Elise, our friends' baby who is a week old.  Born just over a week ago at 25 weeks, 5 days gestational age, we will continue to pray for her and her family for quite some time.  She made good progress this week, with a couple of setbacks.  We pray that Elise will grow stronger and stronger.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

I have been seeing these photos on facebook, but just in case you have not seen this one I thought I would share it.  I hope you laugh as much as I did when I saw it the first time!

Please jump over to the blog hops at The Homeschool Mother's Journal and Hip Homeschool Hop!  Have a great week!

Rachel