Update on Life

Oh, I've been such a bad blogger!

In truth, we have been very busy this past month.The last several weeks have seen a lot of work, some 'school' related, some 'life'. I've been leaning on my favorite term, life-school, here lately. 

Bug working with the stereognostic bag.

We have had many school days since my last post, and started some fun new things.
Little Mama has *finally* begun to use the multiplication checkerboard that I made last year, and is working with five digit multiplicands, and  two digit multipliers. Due to her tendency to get overwhelmed, she generally tends to do only one equation when sitting down with that work, and I'm usually with her or close to her. She moves slowly with it, but I am glad, because she is seeing it work. Since she is already a second year/fifth grader, I wasted no time, and showed her how to use the board and how it looks to work it out abstractly on paper, all at the same time. I didn't push, but just wanted her to see what we were doing on the board, and how that was going to look on paper. She is not required at all to do an equation abstractly yet. She is also reviewing division with larger dividends, and refreshing herself  before we begin with long division.

Hoss and Miss Priss have been spending a lot of time with fractions lately, subtracting, adding, and working with mixed fractions. Fraction work is one that can tend to be 'forgotten about' here if we are not careful, myself included, because there is just SO much we can do, and only so much time in a day/week/month. Miss Priss is also enjoying working through multiplication with the bead bars, and they both have been working a lot with the squaring and cubing chains.

Hoss has been dedicating himself to his piano more lately!

Music has been a great deal of our busyness! We have choir on Mondays for LM, piano on Tuesday for LM and Hoss, and General Music on Wednesday for Hoss and Miss Priss. I've already said before that LM does wonderful with the piano and is playing more and more by ear. Hoss, however, tends to sometimes be reluctant with playing. Then, just a week or two ago, he brought home the sheet music for a song they are learning for the Christmas play this year. That particular piece apparently struck a chord (pun intended) with him, and he played it more than he did the music he was supposed to practice! It was fun to watch him get so excited, unless that excitement hit at night and he wanted to play late in to the night :)

We've taken a small break from Parts of Speech over the last month, while Miss Priss was introduced to alphabetical order and she and Hoss have done a lot of work with compound word practice - a new one for her, an oldie but goodie for him (that gives him a little bit of spelling practice that he doesn't realize was my intention from the start *heehee*). I love this picture of MP. Apparently, upside down in the recliner is the best thinking position for your work, although it's undoubtedly the pits for handwriting! :) 

*TEASER ALERT*

I will be sharing about our compound words work soon, and also our History packets, and offering freebies! Stay Tuned!

Those little flying pigs keep showing up..... you know, the ones that Buddy Boy likes so much? So I keep these little guys all together in a drawer and he can get them out anytime he wants. It's fun to listen when he doesn't realize it, and hear the different scenarios he makes up for them. 

Bug has been enjoying cards and counters here lately, and I can't wait to show her the fun counters for Fall/Thanksgiving time! She's going to love it! She's also been working at a slow pace through the math charts for addition. Where Miss Priss was attracted to these greatly, she isn't so much. I have chosen not to make her use them, but she is getting the concept nonetheless all on her own and will be getting re-introduced to the addition snake game soon so I can *test* her to see where she is at. 

And then, towards the middle-to-end of October, things got a little crazy. LOL - There's no better picture than this to give you a visual. I spent a few weeks slowly helping my mother clean out a house and prepare it for the second and final estate sale. After that, we had a short school week, another yard sale of our own (For the record, I do NOT overly enjoy having them. There was so much left over from the estate sale and the owners of the house, friends, said we could do whatever we wanted with it. Where we live is a good area for them, so I flipped the leftovers and made a profit of my own!). 

Then we went on a mini-vacation visit for a few days the first week of November,l and came home to a train wreck of a house, due to some interior work being done that now has to be cleaned up from.

Thankfully, as of today, we should be able to settle back in for a couple normal weeks of school before having a few days off at Thanksgiving. :) 

Life never fails to keep up busy and on our toes, but we are enjoying it SO MUCH and God's still good, all the time!