Living & Learning Update #6: Drawing, Math, Organization

Our first school week of the new year! It was not a bad week, considering that most of us were in some stage of sickness or recovery from colds and flu.

Learning
We did two drawing lessons this week from artforkidshub.com. What a great resource this is! I have decided that SA(8) needs some more time with a pencil in his hand, writing and drawing. Year 4 is coming up quickly, and he is still a very reluctant writer. He is currently at seven minutes of copywork per day, learning cursive italic. He does it very neatly, but very rarely writes anything else for any other reason. There is no ease in it for him even yet, though he has very slowly and steadily improved over the last couple of years. So I'm adding a workbook into his daily work as an excuse to make him write a little more. I'm also going to try to have all the boys do a drawing every day. All of the boys love the Art for Kids Hub, so I'm anticipating that no one will complain about that.

We have been studying Canadian artist Emily Carr for picture study. For some variety, I decided we would try to draw our narrations after trying to fix the painting in our mind's eye. That was pretty difficult. When we had done all we could, we looked again. There was so much we'd missed! JJ insisted on finishing his.

We have also been taking part in the 2017 Read Aloud Revival 31 Day Challenge. The challenge is that each reading child reads aloud for 15 minutes per day. They enjoy it immensely, as do the little children who get to listen. I love to see them all crowded together enjoying books without me. (I'm still reading plenty aloud myself, of course!)

I am very intrigued by a math program someone pointed out. It's called Mathematics with Numbers in Colour by Caleb Gattegno. I have been using Miquon with JJ(6), but in looking through this other program, it looks like it does a better job of showing a teacher how to guide exploration with the Cuisenaire rods.

Living
I have begun to work through Mystie Winckler's Simplified Organization program. My goal for the year is to give everything in my home a place. I need help with this, people.

My sister gave me a fitbit recently. Shockingly, I'm finding my reading goals are competing with my step goals. So far, the reading goals are winning. I am hoping to work up to 5,000 steps a day this week. I don't know how people do 10,000 steps. Audiobooks?

Reading
I finished Zinsser's On Writing Well and Gerald Bray's Augustine on the Christian Life. I also continued to work on the Iliad, and started The Karamazov Brothers. The latter is fascinating to me. I have a feeling it's going to be in my top ten for this year, but I won't get ahead of myself yet at only 200 pages in. In light reading, I read The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood. I shouldn't have, but it came in at the library and I couldn't help myself. I liked it.

This week I have to finish the Iliad, as my discussion group is coming up on Friday. I also plan to read a couple of chapters of Side by Side for a Bible study coming up soon. For the rest, I suspect The Karamazov Brothers will keep me busy again this week.


Have a great week, everyone!