Day 13: Draw and Write through history

 

Sometimes it is hard to include everything into our schedule. I mean there were literally 11 subjects on Coqui's agenda today. But we started off with his two favorites: history and art. And because he loves them so much, they take a lot of time. (Which leaves less time for the (what Mami thinks) more important subjects like Math and English.)

He loves history, so we read three different stories about Ancient Rome; all really exciting as they were about gladiators, Roman soldiers, wars, and such. Super interesting. We love our curriculum: Story of the world (read my post how history comes alive in our house). So there are coloring pages, map work, and crafts, maybe some additional reading, and almost always a lapbook that I add. Recently, I found this book: Draw and Write through history book 2.
Here is a picture from their site:

We totally love these books, even better than the Write, Draw, Now series, which is all about drawing animals and learning about their different habit. They are not bad books, but my history lover prefers these history books. We have used it for our Greek lessons as well - you can see it here.

If you want to try a free lesson, you can find it under their link: Free lesson, or just click here. Not every child reacts well to this kind of instructions, but my want-to-be-perfect child finds it a lot easier to copy a "perfect" picture than trying to imagine his own. It works for him and builds up his confidence, and my prayer is that one day he will step away and start drawing his own imaginations.

Day 12: Penmanship for Parenting

Not every day is pretty, just like in every other family, too.
Peanut had a very hard time remembering who the parent is and who the child. She always keeps me on my toes for sure and most days, we keep things in a balance. But today, she just kept pushing the boundaries.

So the principal of our school came up with a 'correcting of her bad attitude' assignment. She had to write: "I will listen and obey." Now to me, this is also great exercise for penmanship. She could see that some lines had the same length and other lines were either extremely short or very long. Learning how to space letters is not easy. So we turned the correcting into a learning moment. And she did change her attitude.

Day 011: Happy Valentine's Day

Today was a special day and we celebrated accordingly with lots of family quality time and ice cream. The ice cream place was packed - I guess everyone had the same idea. It was beautiful to sit outside, so the kids could run off their sugar rush afterwards. Perfect. Munchkin looks a little mad in this picture because she was the first one done with her 'only' one scoop and she was not happy.

Afterwards, we went to a book store and the kids could choose a book to bring home. I love reading and I think one can never have too many books in the house. We even met some homeschooling friends there - they had the same idea.

No cards, no fancy dinner, just simply family time spent well together. I hope everyone else had such a great Valentine's Day just as we did.

Day 010: A Birthday present paid off

Many years ago, this handsome man received a gift card for his second birthday. At the time, I think, I didn't even know what Chuck E Cheese was, so I put the card at a safe place. Yes, I did forget about it for a little while. Recently, I went through all our cards and found it again. And today was the day that we got to use it.

We had our annual Valentine's Party at this lovely loud place. Our homeschool group does it every year. The kids get to make and decorate their boxes and write out cards for all their friends, old and new. This year, I am happy to report that I did not write a single card, both big kids did all the work themselves.

Coqui was so excited about this field trip today. He played as long as I let him. Now his sisters do not enjoy the experience as much, but the little one discovered a few things that she did like to do and then she did them over and over. We might have another fan on our hands.

Happy Valentine's Day to you  all.

Day 009: My smart Girl

Munchkin is getting so much better at entertaining herself when the two big kids do their school work. She has always loved those wooden shapes, but I had not yet introduced her to the pictures that come with the shapes. Today was the day that I needed something new for her, so I pulled them out, put them in front of her, and left it at that. Next time I turned around, she was completing the picture, without any instructions or anything. Yeah, sorry, I am sure you can tell that I am extremely proud of her. She is just so smart.