Skip to main content

Weekly Wrap-up ~ The Last Two Weeks

We have had school. It has just taken on some different forms. For instance, Dawson celebrated his 15th birthday and spent the day showing me all the educational aspects of his games on Xbox 360.



I surprised Dawson by picking up his two best friends (one who has moved to a nearby town), and some pizza and cookies, for a weekend of hanging out.


Dawson has spent the past couple of weeks concentrating his studies on Lewis and Clark, The Alamo, The California Gold Rush. He has moved along in Algebra, Grammar, Critical Thinking, Typing, and the patterns of cells. He continued working on his IEW writing lesson practicing summarizing references. We finished The Captain's Dog, but didn't enjoy it as much as we had hoped. But we have been pleasantly surprised with the first several chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that we started this week. I think the most enjoyable part has been me trying to pull off the various dialects. He spent this past week covered in poison ivy, so did the best he could to concentrate and get his required studies done.

Brynne continues to blow me away with her ability to pick up on new material. She has begun multiplication, has continued reading lots of books everyday. She can now do her Easy Grammar lessons, Handwriting Without Tears, and Copywork for Little Girls independently. This week we studied our own home state of Oklahoma in preparation for a trip next week to the Cherokee Heritage Center to learn about the Trail of Tears hands-on. Science has been put on the back burner because of time, but we are getting ready to do some Fall unit studies next week. She even announced that she wanted to start having spelling tests. So, I pulled out my Sequential Spelling book that I bought at a used curriculum sale and we started this week.

Her favorite thing this week was her Girls' Club where they had an all-girl's birthday party. They decorated individual cakes and had a gift exchange.




Then they participated in jump rope activities.




Not a normal couple of weeks for us, that's for sure. But we will definitely be getting back on track this next week. Linking up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Comments

  1. I'd love to hear your thoughts on IEW for high school writing? I'm not sure what we'll be using next year. (I did find Excellence in Reading which looks promising.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Nicole -- I feel like I haven't "seen" you in blogland for a long time! Glad to hear things are going well. I'll be interested to hear what you think of Sequential Spelling. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  3. OOh We will be learning about the trail of tears soon. Looking forward to reading your past about this. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glad you're back! Looks like a fun couple of weeks. Happy Birthday to Dawson :)

    I'd love to hear more about the My Fitness Pal blogger group you told me about.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your children are doing a super job with their studies. I know you have to be thrilled, especially when they ask for extra. My DD is reading a book about the Trail of Tears right now also. We studied the Trail of Tears a couple of years back,but she had to get her a library ook to read about it again.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

We all know that in this crazy world of homeschooling, we need all the (adult) support we can get. Please leave a comment if you so wish!

Popular posts from this blog

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

Last Child in the Woods ~ Chapters 1-4

Welcome to our book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. To be honest, I have no idea what this "study" is going to look like. I imagine that when we get together I will post about all of the things that caught my eye. And I would ask that you leave a comment, or a link to your own blog post in the comment, about what caught yours. This isn't anything formal, ladies, just a place to talk about what we have read. I have now read the first four chapters of Last Child in the Woods two times. It is just so good. Several things have specifically hit me deep, but in general I just realized that "times, they are a changin'." Things aren't the way they were when we were kids. Chapter 1. Gifts of Nature ~ "When I see birches bend to left and right ... I like to think some boy's been swinging them." ~ Robert Frost What is your definition of nature? What feelings, visions, senses does it conjure up? For me, it's not a