Back To It

The best part about getting back into daily lessons (as of Jan 2nd, even though Sweet Hubby is still on vacation from *his* school, if we didn't start I was sure we wouldn't finish the math and history curricula by March 31st) was watching Primo and Radish collaborate on filling in their timeline of history.  We asked them to find between 5 and 10 important events from the medieval periods that we've studied so far this year, and add them to the timeline (a purchased one which we have not yet cut into pieces to mount on the wall-- I tried having a mounted timeline when the boys were small, but our house doesn't have any accessible wall long enough for even a significant portion of it to fit).  At first it was slow-going and they argued a little about sharing the resources (Story of the World, Kingfisher History Encyclopedia).  With a little help from me, and from Sweet Hubby too, they settled down and it was sweet to watch them discuss which events to include. 
Next best was how enthusiastic they both were about trying BBC's Dance Mat Typing.  After lessons were officially over for the day, they each returned to this 'game' and played some more.  The only downside is, they were able to progress quite far in just one day, which tells me that this free online game-style typing instruction is not meaty enough for us to use all semester as their touch-typing curriculum.  So the hunt continues, for a program that will last a bit longer, and give them a good strong introduction to touch typing (or, re-introduction in Primo's case-- he tried Typing Instructor for Kids when he was 7, but he found it frustrating).
I'm thinking about what to do with our weekly schedule for the rest of the year, so that the boys have enough time to work on math, science, history and English, while also spending at least a little time on Latin, geography, music, art, and now typing.  My ideas so far are either to schedule one 'special' lesson per day (as there are 5 of them and 5 days in our school week) or to save them all for Fridays, and do just math and 'extras' that day.