Weekly Wrap-up ~ Steady

This has been an excellent week of school. There haven't been any real bells and whistles. But it was a nice, steady, enjoyable week.

We had a full classroom this day. Some of my students were sleeping, though.

We did have a little trouble getting moving on Monday morning. Even Dawson's cereal wasn't too happy about it.

Dawson was still suffering from his rotten cold, and Eli had to move the Grumble-Meter up to orange. He pulled it together, though, and was still able to help his team earn their letter for the day. The rest of the week it never moved off green. Both kids had an excellent week of work, with great attitudes. The secret word this week was FAIR, so we went to the Septemberfest carnival for an evening of rides last night.

Brynne ran for Junior Miss Septemberfest. She didn't win, but I was proud of her for stepping WAY out of her comfort zone and participating. She said she didn't care if she got the crown .... she just wanted to be able to ride in the parade on Saturday, so she is really happy. Eli, on the other hand, sobbed when she lost. He did say later that if she didn't have a crown, that meant he could call her "Future Queen". He is so sweet!

Back to school.  Dawson continues to do really well. He was excited that he got a 98% on his first Geometry test. And, he said he enjoys doing his weekly world reports for World History.

This week at home we did lots of reading and writing. Our Bible lessons are still our favorite part of the day with Stick Figuring Through the Bible by Grapevine. It's fun and the kids have learned tons already!

Our writing assignments this week were a continuation of "I Am Special". They pretended they were their favorite animal. They made a cover for their book and then wrote special attributes about their animal. Eli's favorite animal is a penguin. Brynne's favorite animal is a dog.

We are continuing to do math fact review, are moving along nicely in our grammar studies, continuing with daily P.E. lessons, and are enjoying All About Spelling. We have two sets of letter tiles. One of the kids works on the metal board while the other works on the fridge. Dawson has been leaving us messages on the fridge with the letters, but since there is only one of each he has to be creative.

We did our first Five in a Row unit this week, and read The Story About Ping. It was a fun week, and it surprised me how they enjoyed listening to the book each and every day and didn't get bored with it. It was fun to look for something different when we read each day. In fact, yesterday Brynne said, "What are we looking for today?" We looked for reflection (in the illustrations), facts about China, and facts about ducks. We also talked about discernment.

For our activities, we did some experimenting with buoyancy and reflection (1). We did some picture walking through books about China. (China happens to be their favorite country because of the moview The Karate Kid, so they already know about all there is about it.) In learning about ducks we listened to duck calls (our Favorite Resource this week), and did a demonstration on paper bags about how the oils in duck feathers helps them repel water (2). Once we were done with that, they decided they wanted to make duck puppets, which they did (3). The ducks helped us do our oral spelling lessons.

Daddy is here for the weekend, so our studies today will likely be light. They did get up this morning and talked about Hurricane Isaac, and watched some animations of it's path. Then they discussed the robot that has been placed on Mars. And, of course, they played Presidents vs. Aliens. We had plans to go to the park today to continue our study on local trees, but Isaac has made his way to Missouri and it's pouring and windy. I'm going to pull out the trees unit curriculum we are reviewing and see what we can do indoors. Likely we will just take advantage of daddy time and pick back up on it next Friday.

We are also planning to do our first artist study today on James Whistler. I'll post the end result of that activity on Monday.

We are so excited that Rick/Daddy is here for the weekend, so we have lots of fun things planned (getting together with family and friends, volunteering with our Sunday School class at a luncheon, going to the lake for the day). I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Other posts you might have missed this week:
Not Back-to-School Blog Hop: A Day in the Life
A Library Story

Linking up this week at:
Weekly Wrap-up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners
Favorite Resource this Week @ Learning All the Time