January 20 - 26, 2013

Another week in the books and another short post.  My dear husband has been putting in some long hours lately, which doesn't leave me with too much free time around here.  Or maybe it's the four children.  Either way...

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 87-89 (writing the number 79, telling time to the half hour; writing the number 80, dividing a square into fourths, coloring halves and fourths; writing the number 81, adding ten to a number)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 137-139 (review the silent letter pair GH, review the vowel pair OU, the silent letter pair GH: OUGH as /oo/ or /ou/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 62-64 (Aa, Dd)
• Spelling Workout A: Lessons 25-27 (lessons 20-24 review, blends with r, blends with l)

I'm getting a little disillusioned with Spelling Workout.  I find it odd that each of the lessons focuses so much on finding misspelled words.  It seems kind of confusing to me.  Henry reads and writes phonetically, so if a word's spelling is phonetically correct, he assumes the spelling is correct also.  He reads a lot better than he spells, too.  So he can see a word like "though" and say it correctly, but if you asked him how to spell it, he'd write down "foe."  Enunciation issues don't help here.  For now, we'll stick with Spelling Workout and hope it improves, but I'm going to add in some spelling games and see if that helps.

Oliver

Oliver continues to progress.  His independent mands increase each week.  He's doing a lot more echoic sounds, also.  We're still working on joint attention, though.

Jane

LeapFrog Letter Factory, plenty of coloring, and looking at books = one happy girl.

Peter

Rolling over both ways now, chewing on anything and everything, and still waking up once a night.

We're in the midst of a great reorganization of the house.  Oliver has been sleeping in our room for the past year because of his sleep disturbances, but he's been doing really well since his meds got changed and we think it's time to try him out in his own room.  So, we're bringing the schoolroom downstairs, moving Peter and Henry into the schoolroom, and putting the old boys' room as Oliver's room.  Henry likes having Peter in the room with him and Oliver needs quiet, so it should work out well.  Fingers crossed.