Week Three ~ The Balance of Life

 Balancing housework and homeschooling is always a juggling act.

I am always tweaking our daily routine to find the best ways (and times) to fit in the housework I NEED to get done in and around the teaching and parenting.

This particular week Monkey and Munchkin enjoyed some races in the backyard while I got caught up on laundry.

 Monster and Munchkin enjoyed listening to a Hairy Maclary audio book together.

Munchkin has discovered, and LOVES, the small white board and Crayola white board markers.  He will often sit at the table and quietly draw while I work with one of the older boys. I can even give him a cloth and he will erase and continue to draw until his little heart is content.

 We continue to observe our bean seeds.

There was great excitement when the boys discovered their beans had split (which this photo does not show well unfortunately) and Monster did an excellent write up in his science notebook for the experiment.

I include some Life Skills in our homeschool life and so each day the older boys have one household cleaning chore they must complete.  We focus on one area of the house each week day and this day was the playroom - so while Monster vacuums the floor Monkey washes the glass on the sliding door.  Sometimes he waits until the sun has moved but on this day he chose to wear my sunglasses!  Munchkin will get in on the action and help pick up the toys before we vacuum... but soon he will join the chore roster!

Monster continues to do well with his writing this year and the IEW program I purchased is proving to be worth its weight in GOLD!  Some day soon I will try to do a post entirely on this program and show the incredible progress Monster has made!!

 Monkey worked hard on his handwriting and rewarded himself by colouring in the pictures on the page - thus his writing pen is tucked behind his ear!

 Monkey also dictated to me the supplies we needed and our procedure for the seed experiment and I wrote everything down in his science notebook and then he drew pictures to show the changes.

 Monster's handwriting continues to improve!

 Mid week we got to help Monkey's best friend (another homeschooling family) celebrate his 6th birthday with dinner and some play time at an indoor playground! All three boys LOVED it!

 A big accomplishment this week was completing our first read aloud of the Bible!

Time to start back at the beginning.

Finally we rounded out the week with Munchkin coming down with a bad cough and requiring a trip to the doctor!