Back into the swing of things!

This week is much more calmer than last week! Last week, we attended vacation Bible School and we went camping over the weekend, we had too much stuff going on and school got cancelled for the week. :)

This week though, we are back at it! We had to skip Monday, but we pulled the books back out yesterday and things did not go well!! We did not have school for 9 days and the kids acted like they forgot everything!!! Courtney forgot her math facts and Megan forgot everything about her previous English lesson (which was using the telephone) and her new lesson was also a struggle.  I knew we had to do a little review, but I didn't think I would get blank stares. It's been only 9 days! Not 3 months!!

So today, we tried it again. I tried a new approach to Megan's English.  We roll-played taking telephone messages and it seemed to go better. I then sat down and walked her step by step through her new lesson, which was using the dictionary.  The part she struggled on was pronouncing words using the pronunciation key in the dictionary. Remember, she was not taught phonics when she was in public school, so she has no idea what these symbols mean! I took a step back with her and went over the pronunciation guide first today and then brought in the dictionary. It seemed to go better!

We also got our read-aloud in today, we are reading "Darling: Mercy Dog of World War I."  This is not a read-aloud with our curriculum, but it keeps us going on World War I while we took a break from our Sonlight curriculum for the summer.  It's also a cute book about a dog who helps rescue wounded soldiers in the trenches in Belgium during World War I. The girls seem to enjoy it! They wanted to read, "Just one more chapter!" again today! I may need to find another book for the next couple of weeks. I think we will be done with this one by next week.

I am going to try to get school done in the mornings and then we can go play in the afternoons.  We have a membership to a gym, so I plan on swimming there and we always need time for groceries and the library.  We also have been meeting up with some new homeschoolers lately, so I need time for that too.