Weekly Wrap Up.....School With a Side of Summer

Once again, the weather was beautiful outside, while, theoretically, we were supposed to be doing school inside.

Here's how our Monday went....

Now, before anyone is tempted to call the school board, we got all our school done that morning before we took off to play hookey ;)

That evening, we had hamburgers for dinner, and ate on TV trays in the living room so that we could watch the Civil War episode of America: The Story of Us.

Let me tell you, warn you, that Civil War battlefields do NOT make for good dinner time viewing. Even if you fast forward through the "field amputation" segment.

And I would say that maybe the loss of good dinner ambiance would be worth it, if both children had come away with a good understanding of the Civil War in a nutshell. But, at the end of the hour long video, Toa asked, "So.....who won?"

Other than that small disappointment, I've continued to love all of our curriculum. Here are some of our highlights from this week:

History:

Toa and I loved this awesome book, A Street through Time. We sat on the couch together reading the book and searching the large, two page illustrations for examples of the various technologies and changes. It was an activity unto itself.




Science:

Sweetling finished her cool car this week. She had it tied off to a cup which was weighted down by her Bible and the little guy was just zooming around in circles on our kitchen floor. I took a video of that, but I'm not techno-cool enough to be able to share that.

Having conquered that project, she went on to begin building a balsa wood glider with a wingspan of 33 inches. She is still searching for the perfect name for it.





Toa's science lesson this week was on gravity. He got to use the car he built last week to experiment with different steepnesses of inclined planes. I have no pictures of this process, because I got kicked out of the room while it was going on. There are some things, apparently, which are just between a boy and his car.

Health and Safety

Every year, the Jedi's company sponsors a safety poster contest for children of employees. (This is cool for me, because participating often covers my state requirement for safety.) This year, the theme is safety in the workplace (including overall health and wellness.) Here is Sweelting's finished poster. Because I'm not so good with the camera, the lettering is difficult to read in the photo. It reads, "Protect Your Hearing: 85 db and over is the danger zone!"

Toa's poster is on Healthy Eating habits, but isn't quite finished yet. I'll post up a picture of it next week.

Reading:

Yay! I finally got my copy of The Book Whisperer from the library! I've been on the hold wait list since early July. I only have read the first chapter, but I'm really looking forward to gleaning some insight from it. Toa considers himself too old for children's picture books, but he isn't quite ready for the traditional chapter books either. And many of the "I can read" chapter type books are just not that engaging or just not that hot when it comes to children's literature. I'm sure there are a few exceptions to that, but I'm having a bear of a time finding them!




Meanwhile, we've started keeping a literature log. And when I say "we" I mean, I'm making him write a couple of sentences about a book when he finishes it. I know, the cold depths of cruelty I am capable of is just astounding. This week, we finished Bunnicula and Friends: Hot Fudge. Last week we read Sam and the Firefly. Toa reads almost every day. He loves our reading time together, cause we sprawl out on the waterbed while he reads aloud to me. We pause and talk about the book and make predictions and discuss the character's choices. But, the reason Toa loves reading is that reading is always followed by a short tickle time.

James and the Giant Peach is our current read aloud. I love James and the Giant Peach. I read aloud to Toa in the evenings. Sadly, I don't get to it every evening, because our evenings are pretty crowded, but we do get to it fairly regularly, and he really enjoys the stories we read together.

Writing:

Sweetling finished her first chapter in Writing the Breakout Novel. I, of course, am not allowed to peak in her writing idea notebook, but I was pleased to see that she had it out while she was reading. Now I just have to pinch the Breakout Novel text back from her so that I can read chapter two :) There are twelve chapters in the book, so I think we can finish the text before NaNo, and then begin the workbook in January. This time when I say "we" I mean "me too!!!"

Cooking:

Friday afternoon is our time for cooking projects. Toa made Cuppa Cuppa Cake.

Sweetling made the world's best lemon bars from scratch and then went on to make delicious fish tacos for dinner.

Finally, having started our week out with an awesome outdoor fun time, we were blessed to be able to finish it off with a fantastic pool party. Our youth pastor's family rented out a local community pool for two hours on Friday night as a giant combined birthday party for him and his two boys. It was a great ending to a great week!


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