I certainly did not start out this week planning on teaching the kids to sew. Miss M has been asking to learn to sew for months. Now, I know a little bit about sewing, but it’s not a really strong skill of mine. My game plan was to enlist some friends who are better sewers to help Miss M learn how to sew this summer (and I still might enlist their help if her interest continues!).
However when Miss M asked me yet again if she could do some sewing…or “even please mom just give me some fabric and tape to make something?”, I decided to say “yes”! Inspired by the “10 Days of Pouring Into Your Child’s Passion” series at Blog, She Wrote and by this post about simple sewing skills at Many Little Blessings…I decided that I could at least get Miss M started with a needle, thread and a piece of scrap fabric. Then Mr. E wanted to learn too! That was a bit more of a stretch for me, but I said “yes” to him too! I drew the line at Mr. K and told him he had to turn five before he could sew!
Hand sewing went pretty well. Mr. E and Miss M made little bags and pillows, though Mr. E later turned a couple of his creations into “wrecking balls” by wrapping the thread around in interesting ways! After a couple days of practice on hand sewing, Miss M thought she was next ready to try a skirt for one of her dolls. I watched a tutorial video and decided that maybe, just maybe I could pull out the sewing machine and help Miss M put a skirt together in that way. We made our own skirt pattern following the directions in the video and I did most of the sewing on the skirt, since I was trying to reacquaint myself with the machine. I consider it a small miracle I even remembered how to get it going! 😉 Unfortunately, the skirt turned out too small. I hope I can keep the momentum going to try again. Maybe we’ll BUY a pattern this time! Meanwhile, I did also let both kids try a bit of machine sewing to make a couple of tiny pillows.
Besides our multi-day impromptu sewing adventure, we did do some regular school stuff and a few other fun things this week:
1. We wished “Betsy Ray” a Happy Birthday in “Deep Valley” last Saturday. Read about it here.
2. and 3. We started a new Family Science topic with a Science Sunday with Dad about plants. Miss M will be putting together a notebook/lapbook about plants…and here the boys are coloring in their own version of a sheet about plant parts.
4. and 5. Week #2 of Logic of English Essentials for spelling went really well. Both Mr. E and Miss M enjoyed Phonogram Bingo on Monday. We played a phonogram game involving hopping up and down the outside steps on Tuesday. I felt like we didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on spelling this week, yet Miss M did a great job on spelling word dictation today! She told me she loves her new spelling feels like “this is finally the right spelling for us!” Yay!
6. Mr K is ready for summer! This is what he was “playing” while the bigger kids did their hand sewing on Monday.
7. and 8. We did about three and a half lessons of Right Start Math this week, including playing a Sum Rummy game, filling out a multiplication table and making a multiplication table out of cards. I wish I could say math went as smoothly as spelling this week. This was, unfortunately another one of those “character building” weeks of math that I suspect had little to do with the math itself. One day Miss M was totally tracking with multiplication, and then today we could not even get through a whole lesson that looked pretty easy to me due to attitude issues. Huh. I’m praying for insight to know whether this is directly related to math and we need to slow down or camp out on some of these topics before moving on…or if math is just the flash point for character areas the Lord is refining in Miss M’s life!
9. This was possibly my highlight of the week…a trip to my favorite semi-annual library book sale in a suburb about 20 minutes from our house. I picked up all the books in the picture (plus a big book on the history of Minneapolis that I missed adding to the pile…that one is for me) for only $10.50! Miss M also picked out about two dozen books that only cost her about $4 of her “book money”. I was hoping for more titles related to our American history studies next year, but I was happy with some Great Illustrated Classics and other chapter books that I hope will appeal to the boys in the next couple of years, a couple picture books, and a few read-alouds to enjoy with Miss M along with the couple history titles I did find.
Have a wonderful weekend!
I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners!
Homeschool Discoveries 