Tricky Tuesday

Started the day with tea and pumpkin muffins for the kids to help them rise and shine. It worked. :)

Jacob got his braces put on today so homeschool was not quite as productive for him. He read his Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. He had a sax lesson (brave with new bands on his teeth). We did one dictation from "The Blue Carbunkle" and I read aloud this a.m. from Eragon.

Liam spent most of the day on the computer except for a bit of copywork. He also enjoyed the read aloud. He is copying limericks. I'm proud of him for plugging away when he finds handwriting difficult. He's done more since the beginning of September than he had all last year, I think. He is motivated and that helps.

Caitrin and I spent a good long time working on reading. She had some breakthroughs (small ones) today while we read a Magic School Bus book. I had her read all of the dialog in the bubbles. These words were larger and hand written rather than type face. That seemed to make things easier for her. She even got her speed up a bit. She still struggles to sound out many of the words, though. And she gets frustrated. I read all the story parts and that helped to balance her efforts. It took us nearly a half hour to work through that one book together like that. Lots of great factoids about bees, too.

She is being faithful to do her violin practices each day and is checking our 20 leaves for color changes and making notations on our chart. I love that she is doing that and remembers each day herself.

The Pi Cafe math yahoo group is already going and we'll begin working on those problems tomorrow. Johannah had a chem quiz and I'm crossing my fingers that all our hard work last night paid off. Noah plugged away for two hours on NT Greek in the test tonight. I was proud of him for working every day this week on Greek and then really committing to the test. He is still a bit behind, but he is easily within range for the class. That was a relief to me. I finished the test first. Didn't expect to. It was not as hard as I had imagined. I probably made some silly mistakes. But the relief of finishing was enough for me.

Everyone is wiped out today. Tomorrow we'll have teatime, poetry and some cuddles. We'll play math games and read aloud.