First Week Overview

Okay, I know I said I'd be keeping people appraised of how things are going here. Well, sorry it's taken this long, but I figure it's time to give you the basic run down of the first week. Looking back, I'm glad. It went well. We are still feeling like this is a good thing. The kids are behaving as though they are best friends again (oh, that was one things I really didn't like last year). I'm finding more and more encouragement from one child to another.

I do have some pictures, and I'll get to those a little later... I'm sneaking a few minutes while the Gabi is finishing "scripture study" - she helped make breakfast while the other three enjoyed a scripture movie this morning.

Gabi agreed that a strict schedule (such as she'd created) was not working. She learned that she loves the flexibility to say "not yet" or "I want to work on this now because..." I am grateful for this because a house of little kids demands flexibility. She's a happier child since she started giving herself a little room.

She started in on learning about sea creatures, although that was put on hold as of Saturday when we discovered some caterpillars. We now have 9 caterpillars (we'll show pictures and talk about them later).

She spent a lot of time learning to read a recipe and also seeing how the different measuring cups and spoons add up to each other.

We spent several days walking in the woods out back.. there's a nice little trail. One day we gathered things to make nature rubs, another time she took out a pad of paper and made sketched of the things she saw. Every time we all stopped to enjoy some wild blueberries.

She's also working on her penmanship. She takes one of her chapter books and copies a paragraph. This is simply to make her handwriting more uniform and neat.

Like I said, I'll elaborate more with pictures later.

In terms of the other kids, I've decided that I don't need to work every day with the other kids, but rather just include them when they want. Jeremy is learning to read, and very enthusiastic about it. He typically likes to work on it every day. And Beth likes to follow along with Gabi in many ways, taking a day or two off to just do whatever she wants. All of which are okay. Gabi is the only one truly of school age right now, and this gives me more time to get the routine figured out with the one before added the others.