Weekly Update - Crazy Week - October 8-12

School did not happen as normal last week.  And, I am perfectly fine with that reality.  My second grandson was born on Wednesday.

He was in the NICU for a couple of days, fighting low blood sugars because his mom is a type-one diabetic.  So, there was a lot of time spent up at the hospital.

Then, on Friday, we skipped school completely for eye exam day.  This year my little bookworm-in-training needed glasses.  We had avoided them last year, as she was borderline then, but this year the doctor felt that her near-sightedness was getting bad enough that she could use them.  If she was in school, she would have probably struggled to see the board or Power Points.  At home, she does a lot of reading, but she isn't straining her eyes to see, and that might have helped.

With school happening only sporadically, I did make a decision.  I changed up our routine a bit, because Megan seemed to be getting dragged down.  I noticed she had skipped some work, and I don't want her doing that in a rush to get through her day.

History:

Megan is taking a break from World History to study Adoniram Judson and Myanmar.  She is also learning a bit about ships in her lessons.  I find it interesting that a young Adoniram Judson was not a Christian despite growing up in a home where his father was a minister.  This delved into studies about Lazarus and the Rich Man as well as The Prodigal Son.    A break from normal studies seems to help Megan to refocus later. 

Bible:

In her New Testament study, Megan continued to learn about Paul's Letters to Phillip and Thessalonica.  She also read Daniel 10 and part of Daniel 11. 

McGuffey:

In McGuffey, Megan finished up "Stories about Birds" and worked on "More Stories about Birds."  Above is her drawing of a canary.

Literature:

Megan is learning about synonyms and antonyms as she prepares to start Miracle at Camp Friendship.  She is still reading When Will This Cruel War be Over for her independent reading.

Word Building:

We are taking a break from dictation for a few weeks and delving into some Word Building.  Megan and I love dictation, but variety sometimes helps.  Word Building deals with more than just spelling, but adds in some vocabulary and handwriting practice. It also helps to reinforce words through repetition and word groups.  Last week she studied words that has the "o" before "r" sound, such as storm and forty.  This week she is reviewing "dge" words as well as the days of the week.  It's not her favorite, but she can work independently.

Science:

In science, we paused Megan's study of birds to focus on learning about length, weight, temperature, and time.  We will go back to birds when she finishes this study.  Doing two different studies at one time was getting confusing. 

English:

We set aside the Language Lessons briefly to study dictionary skills and alphabetical order.  I realized a couple weeks ago that Megan had not gotten much practical use in using a dictionary for awhile because we were using dictionary.com too often.  It's easy to rely on technology and not use real books.  Because of this, I made the switch and Megan is refreshing skills she hasn't used for awhile.

Read Aloud:

We are loving Anne of Green Gables.  We didn't get as much read aloud time in last week as we would have liked.  We stopped at chapter nine.  But Anne and Megan are quite similar in temperaments and chattiness.