Family School and Family Week!

We had a fun week this week!  :)  

I started a new homeschool curriculum this week.  I've had my eye on Latterday Learning Curriculum from the beginning, but postponed getting it until I was sure I wanted to go that route.  I didn't want to jump into homeschool and waste money on a curriculum I'd end up ditching shortly after.  I guess that's a common thing to do when you're homeschooling.  So we shopped around a bit and tried out lots of different things, and now have arrived back to what I was drawn to in the first place; a little more educated about this choice now.  

The reasons I chose it:
A) It's all set up for you to use, with links to videos, lots of activities to go along with each lesson, pictures, etc.  It's a whole year of curriculum for Art, Music, Science, History, Geography, and Literature in one place!

B) It's set up as a "Family School".  That means that the lessons are written in such a way that it can be given to kids of all ages to get something out of it.  That simplifies things a bit.  (Math and English aren't included, because those are the subjects that need to be individualized.)  

C) It's LDS-centered.  Each lesson has an academic concept and a gospel principle.  So, after we talk about the academic concept, we discuss how it fits into our Father in Heaven's plan.  I love that!  :)

So, I bought the curriculum, and we started using it this week.  :)  We're trying out the plan to do math and reading every day, but spend a week on each of the other subjects.  We started it off with Music.  Every day this week we learned about the 5 Musical Eras, and studied about the lives and music of Bach and Handel.  One of the most interesting things *I* learned this week is that Bach averaged writing 25 pages of music a day for 65 years!  On each page of music before he'd start he wrote "G.H.M.", which stood for, "God Help Me".  A sort of prayer before he started.  He'd also write, "To the glory of God, alone."  How amazing!!    

On a side note, William transformed into a tiger this week.  He ran around the house REFUSING to get dressed and matter-of-fact told me, "Mom, I'm a tiger!  Tigers don't wear clothes!"  I had to put my foot down when it was time to leave the house, though.  ;)

Garrett has his best day in Speech in a LOOONG time!  He's been doing ok, but this week he just soared!  I love days like that!  He's working on the sound, "oo" as in "book" or "put".  He has been pronouncing it with an "o", as in "store", so "book" comes out as, "boke".  He's making great progress in speech, and only has a few more sounds to work on.  We're in the process of ordering a new paletometer for him to get those last sounds down.  I don't think he can do them with out it!  They've been tough for him to get, so Mrs. Hart has moved on from them until we get more help.  They're sounds like, "r" and "ch".

We had lots of fun family time this week!  It was awesome!  We had Kate staying with us for 4 days, and Keira was in heaven!  They loved every second together.  The grand finale of her stay ended up with us having dinner with the Isoms at their house Friday night.  We had some yummy soup, and a great night together.  :)    (If you can see this video, it's of Keira and Kate on a cool playground that we went to while Kate was here with us.)

On Saturday we had the Russels over for dinner and a movie.  Will and Parker are becoming better and better playmates as the time goes on (and the small gap between them is closing).

Tonight we continued family week by having dinner at the Stoddards house.  Delicious food, and great company!  Garrett and Tyson discovered that they are quite good pals now!  Garrett didn't know Tyson loves Legos now, and since he does too, they quickly bonded and played together the entire time, laughing and having fun.  

That about covers it.  It was a great week!