Week of Nov 15th

I think this is the third or forth week of being very organized and planning out our week before it happens. Maeve has enjoyed more structure, but she wants to do whatever Finn is doing. I'm doing a letter a week with Finnegan and focusing on a weekly theme. This week we're doing F is for fish and Maeve told me that she loves fish and then whined about not doing the same thing. To compromise, I think I'll stick with how I'm doing things for her, but incorporate some of Finn's activities into her work. I also think I'll do structured stuff with them for three weeks out of the month. We are unschoolers at heart and I want to allow plenty of time to explore interests, although this is funny to me because we only "do school" for about an hour and a half a day. The rest of the day is spent exploring, playing, cleaning, cooking and going places. Anyway, overall my new system seems to be working for everyone.

Maeve is a reading fool. She breezed through short vowels "a" and "e" and we're working on "i" this week. She has been taking the time to sound out words and has read several Bob books this week. She is also reading her Progressive Phonics pages. She is gaining confidence in herself and I am proud of her.

Last week in science we covered skin and muscles. We're learning about touch and sight this week. We made these with stuff the kids collected from the yard and watched what happened to our skin when we gave ourselves goosebumps. Maeve also wanted to do a ladybug lapbook and was supposed to work on it during one of her quiet times, but I think it's buried somewhere on her bedroom floor.

Math is not Maeve's strongest subject. She is more concerned about making her numbers look rock stylish than doing any actual work. I've been having her practice writing her numbers and was happy to see that she took the initiative to write several numbers on the marker board. All numbers were written with very fancy scrolls. I love that kid. Maeve is great at graphing, making tally marks, patterning, etc. She is really interested in using a calculator so I think that's going to be how I sneak in addition and subtraction.

Finn is awesome at numbers. He can do addition in his head and can name numbers up to 100. He's on a bowling league and tells me his score after every turn. His brain is wired completely different from Maeve's and it's interesting to see. Maeve is very artsy and concerned about how things look (like her fancy number scrolls), whereas Finn is much more mathematical. Everything he does must be evenly spaced, lined up and perfect. Finn does not like coloring or painting, although he recently painted several salt dough ornaments. Generally, if it involves mess, Maeve is all over it and Finn opts out.

Oren is all over the place. We've started doing most of our work while he's taking his nap and this is working well. Oren accidentally did a somersault off of a stool yesterday and he thought it was awesome and tried to replicate it. Oren dances when I sing him lullabies at night and thoroughly enjoys being a stinker. He tackles his brother, chases his sister and kisses the dog. He wraps his arms around my neck and snuggles into me and for a second it makes me almost forget that he peed all over the books.