Crystals, short stories, and sickness

This week has flown by. Zoë was sick Monday and still not feeling well on Tuesday, and I was sick Thursday. Somehow we still managed to complete everything on their agendas.

Since Zoë was sick I spent most of the week being able to do lessons separately with the kids. I think Aiden got a lot more out of literature knowing that he couldn't rely upon Zoë's answers to get him through. Either that or his reading comprehension has dramatically improved. I'm guessing it's some of both.

Both of the kids have been excited to write their own short stories, so I've changed our writing assignments to having them work on their stories. Tom has agreed to teach them editing skills. They seem really excited about this.

Another change I'm introducing this week is for Zoë with her math. She has been continuing to struggle with the idea that her math is getting more difficult, but she really has little problem doing it. Lately, she's been spending more time lamenting the problems than actually doing them. So I made an agreement with her that she can either master 5 different types of problems per day or spend an hour doing math (whichever comes first). Yesterday, we finally had a breakthrough and she finished math in 25 minutes.

The beginning of the week we did a rock hunt and then spent time doing tests on each rock to try to figure out what kind they were. The curriculum just had them do the tests and stop there. Aiden was bothered that he didn't actually know what kind of rocks he had, so we went to the library and checked out a field guide and he looked his rocks up. He couldn't understand why anyone would spend all that time doing the tests, and then not know what rocks they really had. Since then he's been reading the field guide and learning all he can about igneous rocks.

Yesterday, despite me having the stomach flu, we managed to complete 6 different science experiments with crystals. Now my kitchen window sill is filled with glasses growing crystals including rock candy. We also got to break open a geode and do some painting with "crystals."

Finally, I knew it was going to happen (though I didn't think this early), but Aiden was working on some math that I could not remember how to do. Fortunately, after one explanation problem it came back to me. He was making a line graph of an algebraic equation and I just couldn't remember how to do that. So together we clicked on explain and after I read it over it came back. Needless to say I have very little reason to remember how to graph things like y = 4x + 2. I know this is just the beginning of these issues, and sooner or later I'm not even going to be able to remember how to do the problems!