Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Regrouping due to snow days

Here's what school was like for us this week ....

Yeah, nothing. We had another 10" of snow, on top of our 24" from last week, so our public schools have been out since last Tuesday the 2nd. It is impossible to get my two homeschooled kids to think school when my two public school kids are not having to do anything. Since we stay on their schedule (so we all get out at the same time at the end of the school year) we have now had 9 days off school. We haven't done a thing but play, watch movies and make a mess.

Now it's time for me to regroup. It's going to be in the 60's this weekend (yeah, Oklahoma), so we WILL have school next week! Dawson and I had actually gotten ahead in school, in anticipation of his snowboarding trip with my husband. But the days he was going to miss school have been snow days, so he is actually ahead.

That leaves Brynne. We are behind on everything. Next week we will concentrate on For the Birds (trying to get somewhat caught up) and Valentine books and activities. We'll get lots of math and reading in through those activities. We'll get back into the full swing of the 3R's the following week. It's all good.

So if you have been following along with us on our For the Birds study, this is what we will be doing next week.

We'll read Stellaluna and do a Diagram comparing the bats and the birds. Then we'll read The Ugly Ducking to compare the two main characters and how their differences really made them special.

Additional bat activities will include:

* Color-by-number and dot-to-dot (counting by 2's) found here.
* Bat word search found here.
* Play Fat Bat found here.
* Stellaluna Batty about Bats activities found here.
* Watch Stuart Little to wrap up our discussions about adoption from last week (and it will tie in nicely with our Stellaluna story from this week.)

We'll rewatch our video Your Backyard in anticipation of Great Backyard Bird Count February 18-21.

And this is what we will be doing for our Valentine books and activities.

It's Valentine's Day in the kingdom of Zeeland where Adeline Addison makes her home. All of the creatures, including the lovable pig, Hector P. Swine, have valentines for Adeline, but they mysteriously say the same thing. Adeline wonders what they could mean until a mountain of cards reveals an earthshaking truth: "God loves you most."

With this book we will make a "God loves you most" necklace with paper hearts and straw pieces strung on yarn.

From the illustrator of "If You Gave a Mouse a Cookie". One day it rains hearts, and Cornelia Augusta catches them. Each heart is special in its own way, and Cornelia Augusta knows exactly who to send them to.

We will make felt stuffed hearts by stuffing them and sewing them embroidery style with yarn and then hang them from our kitchen light fixture so as to have an appearance of raining hearts.

The last thing we will concentrate on will be a state book about Oklahoma, that I will put together for Brynne. On Thursday we will be visiting our state's capitol for Homeschool Capitol Day with many members of our Coop. This is an important day for us to be able to demonstrate to our state leaders how important home educators take their role, and how grateful we are for allowing us to teach our children according to the standards we believe to be best for each of our individual children. In Oklahoma we are virtually unregulated as homeschoolers, and we want to keep it that way!

This post will be linking up with Weekly Wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.