Five Things for Friday–Homeschool, life, details

I love Fridays because they signal the end of the school week, the end of my husband’s work week, and the beginning of concentrated family time all weekend long!  I also love taking time to look back over the week and record what we did, or did not, accomplish.

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In homeschool this week we’ve pretty much accomplished all our goals from this post.  Makayla did not go on to chapter 7 in math because there was a unit test after her chapter 6 test, but she’ll be ready for it next week. She’s working on her typing and I caught a picture of her working on a final draft for writing.  Joseph and Emma are working really hard in their reading to me and I’m seeing Joseph really take a step ahead of Emma in this area.  Emma has been spending every spare minute doing art this week, drawing drawing and more drawing.  She is definitely my crafty girl.  Daniel’s favorite activity this week has been his letter pages from Starfall.  He writes and draws and then colors everything he possibly can on each page.  Oliver has been coloring and playing.  Of course, Caleb just wants to be where the action is.  If mommy is in the kitchen so is he.  If daddy walks past and heads to the bathroom Caleb follows.  When big brothers tromp past with toys in hand he follows.  He’s been loving the 3D Feel and Find puzzles we reviewed last June, and here you can see Joseph trying to teach Caleb about the color red.

The children ended up choosing Mary Poppins as our new audiobook.  Have you checked your local library for audio books?  Mine even offers them in a downloadable format from home – very convenient!  I think I need to find the sequels before we finish this one because they’re going to want them.  We also started another read aloud book as a family – Peter and the Starcatchers.  Wonderfully fun!

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Sleep changes are happening and it makes me so excited.  Oliver’s big change is that he goes to bed with the rest of the big kids right into his bed.  No more staying downstairs to fall asleep on the couch.  I didn’t really have to do anything for this one though – he insisted he wanted to go upstairs with the big kids one night at bedtime, climbed in his toddler bed, and went to sleep.  He’s done it every night since.  It’s heavenly!  Now to tackle naptime…

Caleb’s sleep changes are slower.  I’m still hammering out the details of our sleep plan for him (read more here about his sleep).  What we’ve started with has been simple:

• We make sure to feed him real food shortly before bedtime, not just a bottle.
• When he wakes up at night his bottle is only 2 ounces, and only if he insists he wants one.  So far he insists (cries and takes out his pacifier to throw it on the floor, looks for his bottle).  This will be switched to water in the next week or so to see if we can discourage him even further from wanting a bottle at night.
• Put him in his crib really sleepy, but not totally out, giving him the opportunity to settle himself.  This is more successful in the middle of the night than during any other time.

What we’re seeing is slow but steady progress.  He is waking up less often (twice every night but last night, where he only woke once!).  He does still need a diaper change when he wakes, and that is really what is waking him.  He’s in cloth diapers and there’s no pretending he’s dry when there aren’t chemicals in the diaper to soak up liquid through a barrier.  I’m going to dig out some hemp liners from the basement diaper stash this weekend to see if that helps at all for bedtime diapers. 

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I’m so thankful for friends and family who will watch my children when I have doctor’s appointments.  Some appointments I just bring along the children.  On Tuesday I had a checkup with my midwife and my glucola test for gestational diabetes.  The children were well behaved, enjoyed hearing Mason’s heartbeat on dopplar, and were interested or grossed out by the needles and blood draw process.  They got to ask questions about machines in the blood lab.  An hour and a half appointment was doable with six children, especially when it’s only a few minutes from home.

On Thursday dear friends came over with their three children to watch my six.  I had to travel into the neighboring big city for the ultrasound appointment with the perinatologist(see pictures of Mason from that appointment here).  Spending nearly an hour laying down for an ultrasound wouldn’t work with six little children along, so leaving them at home is a must. 

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Remember that we’re using We Choose Virtues at our house right now?  And that I’m an affiliate?  That means I can share the newest coupon codes with you, so here they are:

• “family” for $3.00 off the Kids Virtue Poster, no expiration date set
• “Virtue15” for 15% off your entire shopping cart, no expiration date set
• “ourhouse” for $15.00 off the new Family Kit, October and November only

You may use one code per order.  In case you’re wondering, yes, I really will be sharing a review of We Choose Virtues in November, which begins next week.  Where does the time go?

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There is still a little bit of time to enter my Hillary Weeks CD giveaway – you’ve got until tomorrow morning so go enter!  I’ve got another CD review coming up soon to get you in the Christmas spirit.  Keep an eye out for it because it will include a giveaway as well.

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That’s all for this Friday.  I’m linking up to Five Things for Friday and the Weekly Wrap-Up or at least to their host blogs as they’ve not got their posts up just yet!