We’re behind on the Beautiful Girlhood character studies with B’twixt and B’tween, but Kathryn and I had a good discussion this week about true beauty. This is so much easier to start talking about now, rather than waiting til she’s a teen. My goal is to start reading our chapter each week at a tea time — but I haven’t quite succeeded at getting that weekly mother-daughter tea thing going again. We did it almost weekly a few years ago, and then other things came up, and tea time was cut from our list of priorities. I’ve recently realized that I very much miss it, and I know it was something Kathryn enjoyed, so I’m going to try to re-establish this habit.

Oh, and speaking of habits… I am very convicted about how desperately I need to be working on developing helpful habits, particularly in regard to our morning routine, but I tend to want to fix everything all at once. Which, in case you’re wondering does NOT work. I need to focus on just ONE thing at a time — and then I can add another when that one is well-established. I loved Tricia’s recent and very practical post on the subject of how helpful habits benefit her days: “How Do You Fit It All In?”

Our language arts lessons this week were about haikus. We even made up a haiku about a loaf of bread at dinner one night — even though they are traditionally usually about something in nature. I suppose we could stretch that logic and say that bread is made from wheat, which is a plant, so that is nature. Anyway, we made up haikus, and she learned the rhythm, and knows that they originated in Japan. We chatted about that again when she learned about Japan in GA’s at church this week.

We faced a little frustration in math earlier this week when Kathryn couldn’t figure out why Teaching Textbooks would let her correct a missed problem sometimes, but not all of the time. She is a perfectionist who can easily have a meltdown over a missed problem (we’re working on the heart matter of perfectionism). But in the meantime, it was helpful when I found out that the program allows you to “try again” on any problem where you type in the answer, but does not allow retries on multiple choice questions. Knowing this helped Kathryn to remember to double check her answer before clicking. This also gave us a few opportunities for good discussions about perfectionism; she comes by it honestly because I am a recovering perfectionist.

In our history readings this week, we’ve continued learned about the expansion of the United States. This week we read about President Polk, the battle of the Alamo in Texas, and about the invention of the cotton gin.

Today, we went on a last-minute field trip to a local King Tut exhibit. It was small-scale and a little disorganized, in my opinion, but Kathryn still enjoyed it. We both agreed that the coolest thing we saw was the real mummified falcon, estimated to be about 4,000 years old.

Enrichment classes: In art, the class started a Monet painting using pastels; in her American Girl class, they played mancala and made a wire ornament; and in her Girls in Grace class, Kathryn made a fruit of the Spirit craft. She loves all that crafty stuff. Now that we’re down to just a few weeks left in this semester of enrichment classes, Kathryn is really trying hard to decide what classes she wants to take next semester!

For literature, we’ve been reading more of King Arthur, and this is one book Kathryn specifically requests more of. It is really quite enjoyable. Old-fashioned in language, and I feel that I need to practice a Shakespearean accent in my readings, but delightfully entertaining. Except for the horses in the stories; the poor things always seem to be dying of exhaustion, or having their backs broken in a particularly exuberant jousting match, and so on.

How was your week? Share your own post, or just read what other families have been doing, in Kris’ Weekly Wrap-Up at WUHS. I’m linking up!

Oh, and one more little thing related to blogland: in case you missed it earlier this week, I was excited to find out I’ve been nominated in The Homeschool Post’s 2011 Blog Awards!

Jamie

Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »