What I’m Reading: The Living Page: Keeping Notebooks with Charlotte Mason by Laurie Bestvater
I don’t know how long I’ve had this on my TBR, but I finally broke down and bought a copy. It’s a good how-to on notebooking for the Charlotte Mason method. Even though I already have a good handle on how to work out narrations/observations, this is an encouraging read and gave me a few new ideas I might be able to implement.
What I’m {nature} Journaling: My son discovered a tiger moth camouflaged on our back door. It is a pretty moth and has intriguing antennae. I’ve also been seeing some interesting insects that have met their demise in the dogs’ water bowl, but I haven’t fished them out to identify them!
Co-op
We had our last co-op class day. It was full of excitement as everyone is finally feeling comfortable around one another with better friendships…always just in time for everything to get wrapped up. It was a busy day for me as we also had open house for new families. I was completely peopled out by the time I got home. We still have a few more activities planned with co-op for this school year, so we still have more to look forward to.
Fourth Grade Highlight
My son can now pretty well label a United States map. Now we’re focusing on state capitals. It’s always nice this time of year to see the progression of what’s been learned and accomplished over the school year. We still have another month or so, but I feel like most things learned at this point are just icing on the cake. (I did have my son start writing out a list of things he wants to learn this summer, so the learning never ends in our house.)
History-wise Paul Revere was wrapped up and now my son is moving on to Thomas Jefferson. I feel like I know very mixed things about him, so I’m looking forward to my son’s narrations to see if I learn anything new.
We also made a small change in dictation this week. I’ve added in the grammar from Simply Charlotte Mason. It’s a good review in most cases, but it’s also some new lessons we haven’t gone into depth with. The way I laid out the week also gave my son more focused chances to study the spelling. I was giving him a lot of this on his own before, but it’s become more challenging. I can see that we need to work on better habits.
Grandpa engineering was this week. They learned more about energy, potential energy, and pendulums. They applied this to real life with my son on his bike. Then my son built a car.
We finished listening to By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was good, not quite as enthralling as some of the other books. It was fun to hear Laura’s very first mention of the Wilder’s crossing her path.
Kindergarten Highlight
My daughter had her very first lesson in math about place value. I’m not quite sure how much of that actually got across to her. I guess we’ll see the next time we do math!
Phonics/reading is going well. My daughter is looking forward to her summer challenge. I don’t think she quite understands what it entails, but I guess that’s what bribery is for (bribery is anti-CM).
Mom Highlight
I’m feeling far more encouraged about school this week. I guess it has to do with getting over that middle hump.
mylittlemullings.wordpress.com 