Ahhh...The first week of school. September is here and promises of apples, pumpkins and leaves hang in the air.
Oh and tears. Big crocodile tears. School must begin again and where there is school, there is sure to be math.

S. began the week by working herself up into hysteria regarding her math. "I HATE WORD PROBLEMS!" she exclaims. I spent a whole evening reassuring her that this year would be different, and we would take things slow. And no, I won't even yell at you. At least I'll try.

We began our week by having a little ice cream social on Monday night, the night before we began. I wish I had a picture of the chaotic kitchen counter or the creations that we made with whip cream.

Early Tuesday morning D. went off on the bus and I waited for S. to wake up. After she did, and dressed in a cute "I look like one of those private school kids!" outfit that she thought Daddy would love, we headed off to a nearby park to do "school pictures". I thought it would be a fun way to start our day. I certainly am NO photographer...especially since I don't know how to use lighting, but here is a sample of our time. I need to decide which picture to print and send to family.

This week we played a few fun games with math...my favorite being "Knock-Out" which will progress into "Muggins" when she is more comfortable with division. She played with different hands on math things, I didn't push, and by the end of the week she had no tears and was figuring out simple division on her own. I made her a "cootie catcher" with division problem on it and she was thrilled. I had reassured her that I hadn't even bought her math book yet and I think that really took some pressure off her. She was very relaxed this week.


She is reading aloud to me each morning from a Rod and Staff bible story book and also doing a lesson of grammar, also from Rod and Staff. She silently reads the lesson then we go over the oral drills together. After that I assign various exercises and require her to do them in cursive.

We did a few pages out of Apologia Science Zoology 2 and are using Live and Learn lapbooks to go along with it. She seemed interested in it, but doesn't like reading out loud. I'm just hoping she will get better at it.

Story of the Word 3 is coming slowly. She doesn't seem very interested in it and I need to find a way to make it a little more exciting...or take her to a place of understanding that when she does a few days of harder work will enable us to do some projects and field trips. We just did one section and did a narration for it. I wasn't feeling well at the time and so we basically didn't do a lot on it.

She is spending about 45 minutes everyday reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator...she loves the book!

Technically, I think we are building up slowly. And I'm hoping that next week will be a little more productive. But, because she is so excited about the math games and isn't frustrated with it...I'm happy too!

Next week: piano, gymnastics, memory work, and spelling get added. Whoohoo!