CC Begins

Monday was our first day back with our CC homeschool group.  Henry had Josiah's tutor from last year, a well-loved Mrs. Walker.  Josiah had a new tutor, and he enjoyed her as well.  They got right back into the swing of it, doing presentations even the first day.  Josiah wanted to speak on Thor and he brought his book about him as well as Thor's Chariot that he made at Lowe's.  He said it went well and I trust that it did.  Henry volunteered to go first in his class for presentations.  We had practiced with him that he'd say his name, how old he was, and a few of his favorite things (his black dog with the orange collar, the color green, ice cream, etc.).  I asked him how it went and he said that he didn't say everything, but he answered a lot of questions "all yeses and one no."  He was asked if he brought his dog everywhere he went, "no."  I asked Mrs. Walker how his presentation went and she said, he did well and he was asked a lot of questions.  :)  

We tried to take a few pictures before heading to CC:

Hey, look, a dog is walking by.

Still walking by, right Henry?

The best we got.  Pre-K, 1st Grade, and 2 yrs old.

They came home to a care package from Grandma & Grandpa with lots of Captain America garb. They even got lego kits in the package.  The boys were quite ecstatic.  I thought it was funny that Caroline took both of their Captain America figurines along with an ice pack and played with them for half an hour or so.  Apparently, one of the Captain America's had a hurt leg.  The other hung around for moral support.

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This has been our official first full week of school now that we have added the CC material, as well as history and science to the mix.  I was unsure how Henry would handle memorizing everything, but he's done quite well.  For CC, at the younger ages, they have a lot of memorization because their brains can do it so easily.  So, there are lots of songs to help memorize history sentences, skip counting, geography, English and Latin facts, science facts, etc.  There is also a timeline song that starts at creation and ends with September 11th (I believe).  Last year, we gave up on the timeline song because Josiah was just very resistant to it.  Since he was in kindergarten and it was our first year of CC, I didn't push it too hard since we do the same one each year.  This year, however, I wanted them to learn it.  We learn a little bit of it each week.

For example, this week we learned:

"Age of Ancient Empires, Creation to circa 450 AD, Creation and the Fall, the Flood and the Tower of Babel, Mesopotamia and Sumer, Egyptians, 3000 BC, Indus River Valley Civilization, Minoans and Mycenaeans."

It is set to a catchy tune and Henry's been singing it a lot.  Whenever Todd asks to review some CC material with Henry, whether it be skip counting the 2's, or his English sentence, Henry always asks to do the timeline.  It sounds much cuter coming from Henry because he still says a "W" sound for his "L's."

Josiah has done well with his work as well, both CC material and his regular school work.  He has even learned the timeline song without issue.  Hopefully, we'll have some healthy competition with the boys to learn the material.  With Josiah, we have to deal with a lot of his furrowed brow "I'm-not-happy-I-can't-do-what-I-want-to-do-every-minute-of-every-day" look, a  lot of complaining, and a lot of not-so-hot attitude.  It's not just with school, though, he blesses us with this not-so-pleasant temperament all day long.  It's been a bit frustrating.  If only we could bring in someone older and wiser to tell us how to help change attitudes!

But next week is a new week and we'll continue to try harder and work on having better attitudes.  It is hard to have to always set the example in that department; I fail miserably with it daily!  Exhausting and impossible without the Lord's help.

We did end the week well.  Josiah had his first Sunday in children's church (which they do a couple of times a month).  He really enjoys church and does quite well there.  He was a little disappointed, though, that his classroom was now upstairs and he no longer got to go on the playground as the little kids do.  It's tough to grow up.