Nov 13-17th, 2006

Monday:  Woke up late as we had guests for dinner last night.  What a fun time we all had, except my lasagne was a flop, boo-hoo ;(  Alas, kids jumped to it and we had a pretty well rounded day.  Did a yummy Crock Beef Stew from the ever-reliable Saving Dinner.  Our chore rountine is shaping up nicely also and we’re keeping the house up better than usual, an added bonus as I’m at my wits end with housework, but just can’t seem to hire it out, LOL!

Tuesday:  See our Grab Bag Day!  It was awesome, and I see a nice trend here!

Wednesday:  Quick morning of piano practice, math, a little history and science.  Letters and words with Seamus, he’s really into practicing writing his letters right now!  Then we headed off to piano lesson for Matthias.  Violet and Seamus played at a nearby park and we watched a few squirrels in action burying their nuts and scampering about!   I still haven’t been able to work on my Homekeeping Binder – maybe this afternoon.  Library stop on the way home for more great Thanksgiving picture books, Aack, it’s next week!!  We’re staying home and it will be pretty low key and quiet, which is fine!  I suppose I better get my act together a make a grocery list!

Thursday and Friday:  Back to regular schedules today and lots of outside play in our beautiful late Autumn weather.  I’m really pleased with how well Violet is doing with her Latina Christiana program and Matthias is really doing great with the Prima Latina.  I’m so glad I didn’t push him into it before 3rd grade as it’s a perfect fit for him now and he’s enjoying it too!!  These days were filled with Much Feasting and Celebrating, so that’s a wrap for us this week!!

November 6-10th, 2006

Monday:  Great school day today!!  Everyone got ALL their assigned work done, mostly BEFORE lunch and we were able to play, and sew and finish chores, play outside and have a nice dinner, rosary and in bed by 8:30!  I just love days like these 🙂

Violet is making beautiful progress in her Flower Fairies Copybook.  She is really doing a lovely job with her cursive, all in colored pencils too! We’ve begun Latina Christiana I and it’s going very well, mostly review to start, but she likes it so far which is a good thing.

Matthias cruised through his lessons today, it was phenominal to say the least.  We really didn’t have too many distractions and he focused very well.  His piano is coming along so nicely and having his practice break right after math first thing has ben awesome.  His Space notebook is looking very good too, it’s a great project for him, I’m so pleased.

Seamus is totally enamoured by The Moon of the Chickarees, our new Jean Craighead George read aloud, pleasantly about red squirrels for his new unit!  He is such a joy to have participate in our learning and tries so hard.  He’s doing superior in math and wants so badly to read, so we’re working on it!

Sean-Paul is just too cute for words, speaking of which, I think his vocabulary has increased exponentially this past few weeks, there are so many, and more each day.  He said, "raining" as plain as day this morning!  He loves to announce "ro-a-rie" before gathering for evening family Rosary, too precious. 

Made my favorite, Chicken Stew with Biscuits for dinner and a yummy Ceasar salad, a hit with ALL!

Tuesday:  Our day seemed to zip by and then it was time to go Vote with daddy and take Violet to ballet.  We ended up staying in town and all having dinner at our favorite Italian place while Violet had her class.

Wednesday:  Library Day, Piano and a fun afternoon with our Teatime!

Thursday:  We’re going full swing into Ancient Greece and are thoroughly enjoying The Children’s Homer, as well as the many books I have found on Greece at the library!  Seamus is having a blast with his Squirrel Unit and we are certainly in full November weather, it’s a rainy and cold day!  Good for hot cocoa and popcorn!!

Friday:  Baking pies for the Womens Craft and Bake sale tomorrow at church!  Went to a new park near there, but it was almost too cold to play for very long!  Oh well, at least we know where it is and will definately play there on our next sunny outing day!  We did spot many squirrels in action so that was cool!

Catching Up: A Few Weeks of Learning Notes

Well, since we went on our little sojourn for Matthias’s birthday, I have been shamefully neglecting my learning notes posts, please forgive me and here is what we’ve been up to for the past month:

Mon. 9/26:  Mondays seem to be the toughest day of the week especially when our weekend’s are busy, so the past few Monday’s have been a bit slow to start, although not unproductive.  These kinds of mornings are tough for me as my "drill sergeant" nature tells me to "crack the whip" when everyone just wants to mess around.  ( In Violet’s defense, it’s usually just the boys.)  Matthias will barely squeak through math sometimes and then I direct him to the piano to focus and regroup while I work with the others.  Violet has been doing very well with her Math 6/5 and has almost finished the fractions book!  After piano practice Matthias made a very beautiful drawing for his Space NB of the earth, sun and moon.  Meanwhile Violet managed  a lovely page of copywork for her Flower Fairies copybook, read several picture books from our Tree/Autumn books basket and then we had lunch.  Baby napped before lunch today which was a little tricky, but he enjoyed some nice music time with Matthias and his Baby Bach DVD so I could read aloud Fire truck books to Seamus.  Seamus also worked on his wooden letters and made two pics, one of the sun and one with glitter glue.  Violet and I did her first page in her new Science NB and Matthias narrated about asteroids.  The rest of the day was outside play and an easy dinner as daddy was gone overnight!

The rest of Sept and October have been kind of a whirlwind, but our schedule is nicely flowing with a few outside activities and much learning going on throughout most days.  It’s hard to believe that Autumn is quickly slipping by and Thanksgiving will be upon us before we know it.

We have truly enjoyed celebrating the lovely Autumn Saints Feasts as well as the Holy days we just started with here in November.  For those of you who keep up with my main blog I do apologize for the lack on entries here, there’s just only so much posting one can do with a toddler on the loose most of the time!  God Bless his little busy self 🙂

So here we are in November, let’s see how it goes…