Another 'this week so far' post

Well, it's Thursday and I haven't managed to make a post yet about the stuff we're doing (or not doing) this week. Time to remedy that.

Monday was our normal trip to the library to help with sorting and packing up donations. The next book sale is the first full weekend of June, with set-up happening the Wednesday before. Which I just realized is my birthday. Yep, I'll be hauling loads of heavy boxes of books through the library on my birthday. Woo hoo! But back to Monday and what we did ... eh. Nothing of great interest happened at the library. Sayer read a book or two while I worked. Oh, and last week (or the week before) I'd mentioned to the ladies who assist with the sorting that I'd love to have a paperback collection of the Harry Potter books so that the kids could have a set to lug around and read and thus not damage my hardback set. So on Monday I found that they'd set aside the first three books in the series. I handed them to Duncan and he hugged them tight and carried them around for the rest of the morning. :)

Monday afternoon was Sayer's karate lesson. Her friend Grayce was there and the two of them had loads of fun. We're trying to line up a playdate with Grayce ...

We also finished reading aloud from Geraldine McCaughrean's Gilgamesh.

Sayer also did several pages of ETC on Monday, and then more of them Tuesday morning, during the time we would normally have been in swim class. This week is 'spring break' for the swim school, so there were no lessons Tuesday or today. After she did her phonics pages we went to Duncan's gymnastics class. He was reticent to participate for a while, saying that he was tired. This is his normal complaint for gymnastics, though usually it's much more credible, as his gym class follows shortly after his swim class (until the end of the semester - next semester it'll be different). This time he claimed to be tired, but agreed to go sit next to the wall and watch the class for a bit. After about 10 minutes he was lured into an activity and after that he was happy to participate all the way through class.

Yesterday, after another session with ETC, Sayer and I sat down with three different history encyclopedias (Usborne, DK, and Kingfisher) and looked at what they had to say about Egypt and Sumeria and Akkadia and Babylonia and Assyria. After all the reading Sayer asked 'what about the coloring pages?' There is normally a coloring page and a map page after a lesson in Story of the World, so she's conditioned to expect one during a history lesson. So I dug out the Life in Ancient Egypt and another Egypt coloring book and copied a couple pages for her to color. This made for a happy Sayer. :)

Today Sayer worked on math using the computer and the 'Number Maze Challenge' program. Then we read the next lesson in SotW, which discussed reasons why ancient peoples built their cities near rivers, and then moved away from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, to discuss the cities built around the Indus in India. Sayer is intrigued by the mystery of why those cities were deserted. I explained that they'd found bits of writing in Mohenjo-Daro, but we can't read it, so we don't know what happened in that city or any of it's neighbors. We decided that it would be great if another stone like the Rosetta stone could be discovered, so that we would have a key to deciphering the ancient Indian writing.

This afternoon we still have a dance class (where Sayer is one of only two students because the third switched to another day/time). Tonight I think we're going to start reading The Chocolate Touch. Both kids are interested in it, probably due to having seen Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory a time or three last week, and having heard the story of King Midas and the golden touch in our Greek myth readings and on Between the Lions.

Tomorrow we'll review our history lesson and do the map and coloring pages. And we'll do phonics pages (almost done with ETC 2 1/2!). Maybe we'll get to a Kumon money page or two. I'm also going to add First Language Lessons to the mix. Many of them she already knows (names, addresses, what is a noun or a verb, etc). But there's lots more to teach.

:)