Learning Notes XXXVII

I never get tired of watching him sleep. Silly goose. 

Blocks and magnets are big lately. 

Monday, October 5th, St. Faustina

Monday was crazy busy. We did bookwork in the morning and in the afternoon we went to the Schoenstatt Girls' Group. We've never been before but I've heard good things. The Schoenstatt Sisters are a religious organization originally from Germany. Felicity and Elizabeth are in the youngest group, Mary's Little Crowns and Cecilia is in the group just above that, the Lilies. They pray together, go to adoration and then study Scripture, the rosary, etc. The girls enjoyed it and it definitely looks worth trying it for the year and seeing how it goes. Additionally, the groups meeting when we go are all Catholic homeschoolers, so the girls get to meet and spend time with other Catholic homeschooling girls their age!

Our parish dedicated a new statue of St. Michael, a favorite of our pastor who is the diocese exorcist. 

Afterwards, he consecrated the parishioners to the protection of St. Michael!

After that we had a quick dinner and I took the three oldest to their AHG meeting. Felicity and Elizabeth began learning some sign language and Cecilia learned about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence that actually spiraled into a conversation about freedoms and everything from taxes and guns to abortion. I was eaves dropping and, other than disagreeing with one girl's opinion that 18 year olds shouldn't be able to buy guns at all (pretty problematic if they are joining the military, no?) while the conversation was heavy, it never veered anywhere I'd consider inappropriate (except perhaps for the mention of Justin Bieber), and the girls kept it lighter interjecting jokes and riddles.

Tuesday, October 6th, St. Bruno

We did more book work and Cecilia, quite impressively, finished all her bookwork for the entire week! In the afternoon we had swimming lessons. Felicity especially is doing really well with swimming but Cecilia and Elizabeth are both so much more independent in the water. Teresa loves it but she still doesn't like to get her face wet. She can, she just doesn't like to. :)

Mr. Thomas became greatly in need of a haircut.

Definitely better. :)

Wednesday, October 7th, Our Lady of the Rosary

I worked with Felicity and Elizabeth on their bookwork and continued Teresa's reading lessons with her. She completed lesson 25, which puts us a quarter of the way through the book.

Impressive how that Maryland judicial system works. 

To complete her cycling badge, which Felicity already has, Felicity, Brigid and I took Elizabeth for her 2 mile bike ride. The weather was just too gorgeous to resist. Then we read Macauley's Pyramid and two more Egyptian stories and then the last episode on the Unearthing Egypt DVD.

Felicity does her script handwriting. I love how those spreadsheets keep the girls informed of what they should do and how often they just jump in and do it even before I know they are working. 

Thursday, October 8th

Felicity and Elizabeth finished their bookwork for the week.

Teresa has mastered building the rocket by herself.

I woke in the morning to find Teresa asleep on the floor of our room. She does this most nights. She says she wants to sleep by me. 

Then I spent a fair amount of time moving 3 large bookcases from the main floor to the upper floor and moving 3 1/2 large bookcases from the upper floor down to the lower in order to have more shelf space in the playroom for the kids' books.

I was pretty tired. You see all those light blue and red lines during my sleep... those were all the times I was up. And it adds up. 

Once I had the bookcases in place, I set about cleaning, organizing and de-cluttering the playroom.

I find it really hard to de-clutter toys. With 6 kids, you don't want to get rid of anyone's favorites or what will encourage imaginative and cooperative play.

So I can't say as I got rid of much, but the room does seem to be easier to clean up now.

And I finally bought the wooden Thomas train sets up from the basement. I put an IKEA table inside the closet to store all the trains below and the instruments and doll house above. Thomas is still a wee young to do much with the trains but I don't expect it will be too long and Brigid loves her "choo choo"s.

We also celebrated Our Lady of the Rosary. I wasn't about to make 60 cupcakes, so we used cookies and M&Ms instead. No one minded. :)

I really noticed Brigid's coloring this week. It is unlike any of my other kids' when they were two. She really makes no pretense about pretending to color inside any lines but she loves to fill the page with color, all colors and lots of them, especially bright colors.

She made a concentrated effort a few months ago to learn the names of the colors and she practiced quite a bit to make sure she got them all right.

So I think she really has a love of color beyond what any of my other kids had at her age, or perhaps at any age.

I especially love the rainbow igloo!