This week’s update is sadly lacking in pictures. I simply forgot to pick up the camera most days. So enjoy the one picture of Daniel and Oliver playing a game together – that’s all I have for you!

1

Groceries for the week cost $132.20 for the 9 of us and we’ve had plenty to eat each day. I see such a difference when I’m diligent in planning meals and shopping wisely. My price book helps me stay in and even under budget!

2

We tried a new recipe this week – Gnocchi. Not popular. Oh well! Basically I picked up a package of this pasta made with potato and rice flour at Aldi and added sauce after cooking. Easy. The only ones who liked it were Mommy, Makayla, and Caleb.

3

The homeschool week kicked off with a vacation day – we surprised the kids with a morning of extra chores and the rest of Monday free. Believe it or not they loved it. We really cleaned out the girls room (paper monsters live there and leave trails), the boys gathered every little Lego from the corners of the room into one spot, and we did a few other projects.

4

The actual homeschooling days were productive. Here are highlights:

Makayla is halfway through her Progeny Press literature study of Shiloh. Loves the book. She’s been doing all things fractions in MUS Epsilon, right now that means adding mixed numbers with unequal denominators. She also is doing sewing/quilting lessons with Great Grandma and loving it.
Emma finished her second chapter book and started a third. She has done well with rounding to thousands and estimating this week. She’s enjoying a new to us game – Spot It Jr.
Joseph is getting faster at his math facts using Math Facts Now. Adding columns of multiple digit numbers in his MUS goes faster because of it. He’s also still Lego creating.
Daniel and Oliver started Peterson Directed Handwriting with mommy. It’s perfect for wiggly boys! I’ll try to share more about this in a separate post later on. They have also played games together this week without fighting over who is winning! Small miracle.
Caleb is working on colors and Mommy is working on being more descriptive. “Look the blue car knocked over the blocks” or “Do you want the black horse or the brown horse?” are little ways colors fit in everyday speech. He’s been into everything in the kitchen this week, including the sugar container. What a mess!
Mason is working on hitting toys together while sitting up. His favorite so far is clunking together two wooden blocks. He has gotten so much better with his balance and catches himself with his hands 90% of the time instead of falling over.

5

Family subjects update: In Mystery of History this week we studied the Sumerians, the Tower of Babel, the Jaredites, and the Epic of Gilgamesh (one of the oldest recorded books, which has several stories reminiscent of biblical history). We’re also enjoying Swiss Family Robinson as a read aloud. Wonderful wonderful book and we haven’t even reached the adventures with pirates.

6

I still have a few homeschool items available for sale that have not sold. Check out this updated post. Everything else sold and the money gets reinvested into our homeschool budget. Yay! We got to spend time with another homeschool family Wednesday when they came to buy some of our items. It was so fun to visit and children from both families are hoping to get together again.

Projects I’m working on:

Still pre-reading and compiling lists for early American history.
Creating copywork pages for the little boys of letters grouped by similar strokes. Lowercase letters are done! These are really for Daniel, but the other boys may want a copy to color. I’ll share pictures in the post about Peterson Directed Handwriting later.
Making a chart listing hands-on manipulatives I own. My goal is to pull them regularly with my younger children. I figure if I have a chart to mark off when each gets used I can more easily remember to use all of them each month. Of course my older children are welcome to use them – and sometimes they do!

That’s our random report for the week. What’s been going on at your house?

This post is linked to Five Things for Friday (even though I have more than 5 things…LOL).