I planned a lot of our weeks to be 4 days with Mondays off. It’s working well for us. This week, however, it occurred to me that a 4 day week with Friday off would be better because then we’d get to start our Christmas break a day sooner (plus my parents are arriving this afternoon so we only have to do school two days while they are here). Because of that, our normal days are shifted. I kept track of what we did yesterday (Monday) in school. It was like a normal Tuesday without a break to go to taekwondo.

Cameron had an orthodontist appointment at 8. This put us a little behind in getting school started. We did our opening stuff at 9:45. That’s the day/date, pledges, article of faith (#8 this month), primary song (currently I Lived in Heaven), and scripture mastery memory verse (right now we’re working on part of D&C 13:1). For a while Fritz has also been working on the pronouns and the helping verbs, but last week he got them all completely memorized so I erased them off the board. Opening activities took 5 minutes.

At 9:50 we started religion. We watched three D&C videos and talked about some of the important sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. This took 5 minutes.

9:55. History. We’re studying Russia and Prussia right now. We read two pages in the Usborne World History book, a chapter in Child’s History of the World, and two chapters of Story of the World. Fritz really liked hearing about leaders named Frederick and Fritz. (Also, apparently, my children are total Texans – they need blankets even when it’s over 70 degrees.)

Once we finished all the reading, we moved back to the dining room table. We defined dominate, discussed what we’d read, and did some map work, including finding Russia on the big world map on the wall. History took a total of 45 minutes.

At 10:40 Cameron and Fritz started math (Math Mammoth – pre-algebra for Cameron, 4th grade for Fritz). Cameron did 4 pages on negative integers, inequalities, and absolute value. Fritz did four pages of addition review. Cameron took 35 minutes and Fritz took 65 minutes to do math.

At 10:45, Adrian did some poetry reciting and read the note I wrote to him (each day I write him a note and he has to read the whole thing himself and then he gets to keep it… we’re discovering when he sees a reason, he reads really well!). This took 5 minutes.

At 10:50, Adrian did his math (Math Mammoth 1st grade). He did two pages counting and writing numbers. He’s been very resistant to writing anything so it’s great he’s attempting to write a little bit now. This also took 5 minutes.

11:15. Cameron moved on to Writing With Skill 1 Week 16, Day 1. He had to read a passage and write a one-level outline about Queen Elizabeth I. He completed this in 25 minutes (including a 3 minute break to watch the video of him performing at the Gala Saturday night).

At 11:20, Adrian did First Language Lessons 1 lesson 43. He worked on memorizing a new poem and did a little copywork. This took him 10 minutes. At that point, Adrian was done with school for the day. That’s a total of 20 minutes on his own and one hour and 15 minutes all together.

Cameron moved on to spelling at 11:40. He is reviewing lists at the mid-point of level C right now. He went through nearly two full lists before he got a total of 5 words spelled incorrectly to study. Spelling took him 10 minutes.

11:45. Fritz did some handwriting. He is learning to write in cursive and his daily handwriting is copying things I write for him. Right now that is bits from the scripture mastery memory verse. He spent 5 minutes on handwriting.

At 11:50, Fritz started working on First Language Lessons 3 lesson 41. He learned about the understood you at the beginning of commands and how to diagram them. He spent 7 minutes on that lesson.

At the same time Cameron began reading (using the immersion feature on his Fire) the first third of stave 4 of A Christmas Carol. He read for 20 minutes.

Fritz started his Writing With Ease 2 Week 16, Day 1 lesson at 11:57. He listened to a portion of a story and then did a narration. This took 5 minutes.

At 12:02, Fritz started working on a Brainy Acts (critical thinking) page. He finished it in 5 minutes.

12:07. Fritz started spelling. He is doing review from the end of level C. He’s on a list of proper nouns and it’s giving him a little trouble just like it did the first time through. He made quite a bit of progress, though, before he had three words misspelled to study. Spelling took him 8 minutes.

At 12:10, Cameron finished reading and answered his comprehension questions. That was the end of the school day for him. School lasted 2 hours and 25 minutes for Cameron.

At 12:15, Fritz started working on his three vocabulary words from chapter 13 of The Borrowers. Only two of the words had origins cards. This took 7 minutes.

At 12:22, Fritz started reading chapter 13 of The Borrowers. He finished reading 13 minutes later and answered his comprehension questions. Fritz was done with school at 12:35. School took 2 hours and 50 minutes for Fritz.