Second Sunday of Lent; March 4 - 10, 2012

We are settling into a great little routine!  The Jesus Tree, Lent calendar, and family Way of the Cross are really helping us all to have a greater understanding and appreciation of the Lenten season.

We start our fifth Station of the Cross today.  As we complete each one, I've been putting them on the wall of the staircase.  We're alternating between calling it the Stairway to Heaven and the Stairway of the Cross.  Henry doesn't get either the joke or the pun.  That's okay.


The coloring pages from St. John's are a wonderful activity.  Henry enjoys coloring each one and I'm putting all of the ones that I color and laminate up on the wall in the schoolroom so we can have them to look at throughout the year.  Starting this week, I'm also going to print out one of the Sorrowful Mysteries for Henry to color each Friday while we all listen to the rosary.  We'll complete the last one on Good Friday.

I used this site to create a penmanship practice page with all of the Stations of the Cross, also.  It's a nice little bit of extra practice for handwriting.

This week, Henry has three math assignments.  They are:

• Lesson 73 - Comparing length, identifying shorter and longer
• Lesson 74 - Ordering four objects by length
• Lesson 75 - Naming a shape piece using three attributes (size, color, and shape), handwriting master 12

Oliver doesn't have speech therapy this week or next.  He and Jane are still watching  Baby Babble - Speech-Enhancing DVD for Babies and Toddlers, and Baby Babble 2 - First Words: P B M.  We've also added Baby Babble 3 - Next Words: T D N to the playlist, much to their delight.  In addition, I've also been going through the color and shape pages of Starfall with Oliver each morning.  He's actually said "circle" a few times while pointing to the circle shape!  He's also doing great with tracing the shapes on this app that I downloaded for my Fire.  I've been exploring some of the different language apps that are available in the Amazon Marketplace and this is one of the winners.  His speech therapist is using some similar iPad programs during his therapy sessions and they really keep his attention.

Since Oliver is showing more interest in his shapes and colors, I'm going to work on creating a Tot Book for him this week.  I'll have a separate post on that when it's all finished.

Yesterday, we had a fun day out.  We went to a local history festival and spent an inordinate amount of time in the little petting zoo.

Henry and I also explored the old courthouse that was open for tours during the festival.  It's still used for Teen Court, apparently.  You can just see his little head peeking over the top of the judge's desk.  Notice the little brass spittoon on the floor in front!

In the witness chair.  "I didn't see anything!"

 

 Then, we finished off the day with a visit from my brother, his wife, and their two kids.  We don't get to see them very often because my brother is stationed up in Maryland, so it was really nice to have them over for the evening.  All the children had a great time playing with each other and getting into mischief.  We actually got everyone to sit still for a few minutes on the couch and got a shot:

 One out of five looking at the camera is not that bad, considering.