Weeks 2 and 3: After

Week 3 is in the bag, as they say. Yeah, I know, this should be the end of week 4, but who is counting, exactly? And, um, yeah, Friday hasn't happened yet, but we're going to the Fair, which is at least as important as fractions, cursive, and American History. Actually, I planned for this to happen well in advance-I knew we'd be going on vacation and hectic and started school two weeks before the regular school kids, just to compensate. 'Cause Lord knows homeschoolers can't fall behind public school kids, even in attendance, right?
So...Avery is speeding through Life of Fred~Fractions. Loves it. I'm waiting still for the whole entire set of Key Curriculum Press workbooks to arrive, then we'll start adding in those. We haven't done any Calculus by and for Young People yet, but we did check out the Mathematics Made Meaningful Cuisenaire rod kit, Miles and Avery both. I'm not sure how much we'll use the cards, frankly- they seem a little... ahem... boring... but we do love our cuisenaire rods, and Miles sorted out a bunch by color, and enjoyed being able to "do school" with Avery.
All last week was nature study, at Glacier and the Bison Range. The boys saw turtles sunning themselves and poking their heads out of the water like mucky little sticks, dragonflies mating, elk bugling, antelope, bison, bears, deer, fish, birds, slugs, all kinds of creatures.
Avery zoomed through a ton of the Earthsearch book on the trip, plus a lot of map reading, compass work, and general geography of the inland Northwest and Rocky Mountain region. He straddled the Continental Divide and learned to identify U-shaped glacier-made valleys, and V-shaped river made valleys.
He had a guitar lesson and his teacher finally let him move past The Blue Danube, which has been driving him from even wanting to look at his guitar for weeks now. On to more fun stuff. Whew!
The boys love circle, and love taking a walk first thing- if only I could get Papa out of the house at 7:30, so that we could have a decent walk AND not start school so late. He's been leaving at 8, and we're out the door before him, but the boys hate to leave while he's still home. We've been walking for an hour, then starting circle at 9, then oral reading, math puzzler, main lesson, Life of Fred, spelling, and just trying to stuff as much in as possible.
We attempted some wet felting, making octopus figures, but it didn't work out. I'm not so good at wet felting, except snakes and balls, which is all the octopus was supposed to be, just felted together, but it didn't work. At all.
We haven't started embroidery yet, even though he's been asking for weeks.
We haven't really started Latin yet, Artistic Pursuits, and a whole bunch of ther stuff, too, probably. Gotta get out the door just a little earlier, and take shorter walks in the morning, I guess.
The good news, though, is that Miles loves having his own school basket, and eagerly works through his activites and stories every day, so he's not begging to watch TV or bugging Avery. Ansel is exactly the Buddha baby I KNEW I was going to have- he watches his brothers and chuckles, and sucks his fingers, nurses, sleeps, and tries to figure out how to crawl all with equal delight. Avery is cheerful and good about school this year, and likes having shorter lessons, a clear plan to the day, boxes to check off, and interesting work to do. So all's good, if not quite on schedule yet. Which, you know, is pretty darn good!