Week 17, day 5

Over the past few days, I've been mulling over our school schedule, how much I try to get done in a day, and how many of my great ideas I don't have time for. (I didn't have time even before the baby was born, and now...). In a few places (blogs, books), I've run across the idea of doing just one main subject per day, along with minimal necessary review (reading, math), and it rather appeals to me. We tend to take a long time over each subject each day, and if I limit the number of subjects that we try to cover, I think we'll be able to cover as much material without it eating up as much time. So my current plan is to at least try the following.

DAILY:Current memory verse and catechism review, calendar update, reader, math 5-a-day, and E's "school" (reading a book or doing a SSGMR activity). Then proceed to the daily subject. In the afternoon, encourage P to practice what she's learned in piano so far (which takes literally 2 minutes at this point).

MONDAY: Language Arts. Introduce the letter for the week, have P do all the copywork (this is the part I'm least sure will work, so I'll be flexible), the creative expression assignment, and introduce the reader.

TUESDAY: Science. We go to Titmouse Club on Tuesdays anyway, so this will fit in nicely. I'll try to get library books on the topic covered by Titmouse Club, and failing that on anything else I think the kids will be interested in. We can find plenty of science experiment books at the library, and the kids will go wild.

WEDNESDAY: Math. Wednesdays are the days I'm most tempted to give up and not do school at all, and since I LOOOOOVE (insert huge heart here) math with a passion, this will make me super-eager not to be lazy. We can play math games, bake together after P's ballet lesson (hooray for kitchen math), and do formal lessons sometimes too.

THURSDAY: Bible, Music. Since we're already in Bible Study in the mornings, we can discuss what the kids learned in Bible Study. They'll be thrilled to read more than one Bible story in a row, since they often beg for me to read "just one more". We can spend more time discussing stories and perhaps acting them out or illustrating them, and we'll introduce the new catechism question and memory verse. Then we can go down to the piano room and play rhythm games, etc and I can teach P the next installment of her piano lesson. I may even get around to implementing the idea I had at the beginning of the academic year of learning a hymn each month.

FRIDAY: Geography. We can read about the country of the week, and P will have time to spend making a little book about it. If I'm super organized, we can even find a recipe for food from that country and make it.

So today, I tried out the idea with it being "Geography Day". I decided that P was reading this week's reader well enough that we didn't need to review it, so we updated our calendar, she did her math 5-a-day, and we went straight on to geography. We read (well, looked at and discussed pictures in) a book about Norway, and leafed through a weekly pictorial calendar of Norway. P then made a book, featuring a flag, a map, a Sami person (from Lapland), a reindeer, a person skiing, a glacier, and another thing I've currently forgotten. Although I hadn't chosen a recipe in time, I plan to make Norwegian heart waffles with the kids for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I found the new schedule more relaxing. I think moving the math review, particularly, to the beginning of the morning helped P do it more quickly because she was less tired. While P was working on the last bit of her 5-a-day (which she can do independently), I redid the SSGMR activity for the week with E. It was a version of "Kim's Game", where I showed him 4 items and then removed 1, and he had to tell me what I'd removed. He did significantly better this time than the first time we tried it, guessing the item instantly 3 of the 4 times we played. He made his own book, too, while P was making her Norway book, though E's didn't have a consistent theme.