Getting back into the GROOVE!!

Well, this has been a GREAT week so far! I'm still following my "lesson plan" to a certain extent, but I've changed some things around so we're not doing so much book work, which has made things so much more smooth. And enjoyable for EVERYONE! We're still doing math each day, but only one lesson instead of the two that I had planned for. (I was going to do two yesterdaybecause the first on was super easy for Bear, but we ran out of time before we had to be at our neighbor's house for Bible story time. No biggie.)
Bear loves The American Girls, and we're presently reading the Kirsten's Story Collection (for the second time!). I checked out a book from our church library called Kirsten's Craft Book which is full of things that they would have made back in the pioneer days, Kirsten's time period. So far this week we've done two of the crafts - a "chromotrope toy" which is a spinning disc on a string and a yarn doll that Bear named "Rainbow". She also used a piece ofcardboard and made a "bed" for the doll - she loves making things!
We've also begun to do some lessons from Five in a Row, using the book Madeline. I love how FIAR uses things from the books to teach all different subjects! Yesterday we colored a French flag and learned about the Eiffel Tower on the internet. Today we talked about what Madeline's friends did to make her feel better when she was in the hospital and made a "Compassion List" of things that we could do to make people feel better. Some of the things that Bear came up with were "Make a flower crown" and "Help someone clean up their room."
The best game we've done so far this week is The Croc Game, the idea for which I got off of the homeschooling board at http://www.justmommies.com. On cards, I put all of the short vowel words that she's read over the last week or so and placed them on the floor. I would tell bear to look for a specific vowel sound word, grab the card and toss it into the "croc's" mouth, which was a big green laundry basket turned upside down. She loved it and even asked to play a few extra rounds! I also played this with Deco, having him pick up a particular color of bead.