Stuff this week

Last week and this week, Johnny and Vivie are doing preschooler swimming lessons. It's the same class that Johnny took last summer. I think they're both learning and having fun.

Unfortunately, they have each missed two days. One day Johnny had a fever. Another they both missed because I had a dental appointment that I needed to keep. And Vivie missed a day when she caught whatever germ Johnny had, and took a nap on the swimming pool bleachers. I didn't know she was sick until a few hours later. It was just a fever and then that was it. Good grief.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm not doing the class myself this year. The water is too cold!

We are on unit 4, Apple, with MFWK. I bought 11 varieties of apples and we've been taste-testing them throughout the week. None of us like Braeburn. Texture is just off to us. Johnny thinks Granny Smith is a bit too tart.

We're reading plenty of apple and leaf library books (since I didn't get a chance to get them during the leaf unit, but I figure we can still read about leaves).

Still skipping most of the phonics activities. I tried to get Johnny to sing the "vowel song" with me and he wouldn't do it. Tried teaching him the "I like to eat apples and bananas" song and they laughed, but he wouldn't sing along. Maybe later. How can you not like that song?!

Borrowed two movies about Johnny Appleseed from the library: American Legends and Johnny Appleseed (with Martin Short, lol). The second movie was meh. The kids weren't interested and there were problems with the disk. The first one was ok. Johnny Appleseed sang the song that we're learning in MFWK this week.

Still doing some All About Reading.

And we've added back the "Bible Stories to Color" workbook from Rod & Staff preschool that we forgot about awhile back. There are a few color-by-number pictures and Johnny likes that.

Vivie has chilled out and is letting us do our thing. She will often listen to the stories we read. Today when Johnny and I were doing some worksheets and whatnot, she was playing with Play-Doh and was content with that forever. Yay!

Amelia just kinda hung out near me and did baby things.

Though it's light, I do like the math concepts introduced in MFWK. We made a chart of apples we had, and plotted out some visual representations of apples and colors on a chart work sheet.

The handwriting is only going so-so. He has some bad habits with letter formation, and they are tough to break. I'm going slow and I'm not requiring that he finish the handwriting sheet in one day. Just a few letters, and then more later. We do a lot of practice writing on the carpet. It's good to get the formation, without seeing the "mistakes"

Maybe I'll pull out my Handwriting Without Tears resources that I grumbled about a few posts ago. Hopefully they'll help.