Weekly Wrap-Up: In With the New!

I don't think I've written a week in review since August. But, to quote Flylady, "....just jump in where you are."

This week. I'm just going to focus on this week, and not go into a lengthy explanation of how I got so far off track.

This week started with taking down the Christmas tree. That's always a bittersweet thing. I like the Christmas tree, and yet, I'm also ready to get back to a routine. (Well, I'm a little ready to get back to a routine.) In our family, each year we take turns deciding how the tree will be decorated. This year, it was Mama's turn. (My mama, my mama lives with us now.) She decided we were each going to make heart shaped paper ornaments and write our favorite Scripture verses about Jesus on the ornaments. It was lovely.

Since the tree was all decorate in red and pink hearts, I considered petitioning leaving it up until mid-February for Valentine's Day. But, in the end, the tree needed to come down so that we could get back to the business of school.

So, by Tuesday, we had gotten back into the swing of things. We're using Homeschool in the Woods' Time Traveler series for our history curriculum, and our timelines are coming along so well, we need the entire living room floor to spread them out.

Art led us to a cool pop up of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters (part of our Time Traveler's pack). AND, to a neat cardinal in winter art project, courtesy of Deep Space Sparkle.

Showcased behind the cardinal is some bare winter tree branches. We took our camera outside and snapped some pictures of branches highlighted against the blue sky. We each took turns with the camera and zoomed in on the section of branches we wanted to photograph. Of course, it was a warm, beautiful, sunny day....so this turned into an excuse to take a walk around the neighborhood.

Back inside, we pulled the photos up on the computer, talked about the negative space in between the branches, and used our photographs to inspire us when we drew the branches behind our cardinal.

Then we followed Deep Space Sparkle's directions to complete our art. We painted the sky using blue metallic acrylic paint. We painted in the cardinal and the branches and used a thin black brush to add details.

We haven't done the final step of using a Qtip dipped in white paint to add snowflakes. We're waiting for the rest of the paint to dry first.

Sweetling's science has been on hold since October. Her November subjects got paired to the bone in order to free her up to participate in NaNoWriMo. This week, she got back to her amazing glider. Check him out...I put a folding yardstick by him for a scale.

His wings are covered in this cool plastic which she shrunk to a perfect fit using a hair dryer. Supplies and directions were all part of her Education Exploration science curriculum.

Toa of Boy is more than ready to move on in science, and he wants to study space next. So, Apologia's Exploring Creation through Astronomy has been ordered and is being shipped. In the meantime, Chapter Two is available as sample pages on Apologia's home page. Chapter Two is all about the sun, so we read about the sun, got a soccerball and a peppercorn to compare the size of the sun with the size of the earth. (It was supposed to be a basketball, but we don't have a basketball, so we did our best.)

And, most importantly, Toa of Boy got to witness a small fraction of the awesome energy of the sun by using a magnafying glass to burn a hole in a leaf outside. (We tried a piece of paper first, but wound up using a dried leaf.)

Not bad for a first week back in a long time!

To read what other homeschoolers are doing this week, hop on over to Weird Unscocialized Homeschoolers.