Weekly Wrap-Up ~ 100 * Gold * Presidents

I saw over at Managing Your Blessings that Carlie has eliminated the prompts for the Homeschool Mother's Journal. Sometimes I think that I don't like using them, but then I go back and read my posts and realize how it helps me to center on what we really accomplished in the past week. So I have decided to continue using them, for the most part, but change it up just a tad.

The Past Week in our Regular Life

Where was that warm weather we were supposed to get last weekend? Not in Missouri, that's for sure! We froze all weekend! But by Tuesday it was in the 50's. Brynne and I rode our bikes to and from her basketball practice that night. That was a nice change! And instead of unit study on Wednesday afternoon, I told the kids they could get outside and ride their bikes for 30 minutes, but it was windy! By Wednesday night it was raining, and rained all day. Today it was so nice I actually got out and cleaned up the yard. And it's supposed to get cold again by Sunday with frigid temperatures for the next week or so … with possibilities of more snow! Boo hoo!! I know that in a few months I will be complaining about the miserable heat, but for now … GEEZ, I am sick of the cold!

The Schooling Basics

Bible - We studied about the Division of God's Kingdom with Israel being split into Judah and Israel.

Grammar - We did some review, learned about quotations, and vowel and constant suffixes.

Spelling - We did more vowel chunking, copy work and dictation in Spelling U See and memorized "I'm a Little Teapot". We also learned -ind and -ink words in Soaring with Spelling.

Handwriting - We completed three lessons in Handwriting without Tears - Cursive Success.

Math - In Math U See we completed Lesson 23 and learned multiple digit multiplication. We decided we do not like to learn multiplication with 'factoring'. All it did was confuse us. So we continued learning the old fashioned way of just doing it. In Mastering 5th Grade Math - Fractions, we learned how to write fractions with words and translate words back to fractions.

Writing - We continued to work on our problem/solution stories with character and setting descriptions. Today they took what they pieced together last week and wrote a 'sloppy copy'. I am seeing such progress in writing, especially out of Eli. Instead of just putting his notes into a paragraph, he actually added things to his story as he went along to make it "more interesting".

Science - The kids learned about The History of the Earth from Science4Us. We completed that module. This program is not based on a Christian Worldview, so I had to intervene on several occasions to interject what we believe as Christians.

The Schooling Fun Stuff

Our unit studies were all over the place with Presidents Day, the Olympics and our 100th Day of School all happening in the same week. But, it was a fun week!


President's Day

Unit study from School Express

Scholastic Storybook Treasures: Amazing America, Episode 4: "So You Want to Be President" (watched on Netflix)

Trailer for the book (we have read the book also, but the video is much more entertaining!)

The Olympics

Eli and I spent some time watching the men's giant slalom, the women's bobsled and the women's figure skating short program. We were super excited Ted Ligety won the gold in the giant slalom, and that Lauryn Williams grabbed the distinction as the 5th female Olympian to win a medal at both the summer and winter Olympic games (that was a cool story). It's so fun to watch history being made. Bummer for Gracie Gold that she just missed being on the podium in figure skating. Eli is my Olympics buddy. Brynne isn't really into it.

We did watch ski jumping together on Friday and made this fun art.

The 100th Day of School

We had "100" waffles for breakfast.

This is what time we "officially" started school for the day.

For lunch ….

We read Jake's 100th Day of School by Lester L. Laminack and illustrated by Judy Love.

We flipped coins 100 times to see whether they landed on heads or tails the most. It was a tie!

We rolled two die 100 times to see which number was most popular. The number "1" won followed closely by "6". And we did 100 jumping jacks.

The kids wrote a paragraph: "If I had $100 I would …."

buy a swimming pool and a giant screen t.v., tomorrow. I'm going to Walmart to buy them (in my dream). With my dream $100 I would buy them. I hope I have that dream again! ~ Brynne

spend some on Legos. I want this set called Batwing Battle over Gotham City, because I love the batwing. Next is the Joker Steam Roller set. I loved Legos since 2012. ~ Eli

We computed how many $1, $2, $5, $10, and $20 we would need to make $100.

We worked together to figure out the following problem: How much money would I need if I wanted to buy 100 gallons of root beer in 2-liter bottles and each 2-liter bottle cost $1.10. After they watched all of the computations they said, "We'll never learn how to do all that!" I assured them they would.

The Kitchen

Kyndal woke up with some sinus junk on Tuesday, so I promptly made some homemade chicken noodle soup with good vegetable and garlic broth for when she got home. For myself, I made a big pot of vegetable chicken and lentil soup to eat for lunch the rest of the week. Yum! The rest of the week? Our easy kid food! Our new way of eating dinner is going great!

Tonight we had pulled bbq chicken in the crockpot on kaiser rolls with chips and pickles. Then Kyndal made a s'more dip. And then we were all stuffed and miserable.

The Days Ahead

Tomorrow Brynne has a basketball game and the kids have their bowling league. Then Brynne has a basketball tournament on Sunday afternoon. The bitter temperatures are coming back on Sunday, so I am sure we will be staying in the house as much as possible again over the next week or so.

We also did some hour calculations and realized that we might potentially be done with our school year at the end of April! That would allow us to take off the whole month of May before we start summer school for June and July. The kids were really excited but realize that they have to put in some serious hard work over the next several weeks for that to happen.

The Books We are Reading

Mom: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini.

Brynne: A Big Year for Lily by Mary Ann Kinsinger and Suzanne Woods Fisher.

Eli: George Brown Class Clown: Super Burp by Nancy Krulik (finished) and George Brown Class Clown: What's Black and White and Stinks All Over? by Nancy Krulik.

Read Aloud: Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary (finished).

The People and the Places

Brynne had basketball practice on Tuesday night and we had church on Wednesday night. Then I babysat my niece on Thursday. Other than that, we didn't go anywhere or see anybody!

The Savings Jar(s)

I was so excited at the beginning of the week because I thought I was actually going to be able to successfully save $100 out of our grocery budget this pay period to put in the jar. But after learning that softball signups were on Sunday at a cost of $60 and that our dogs all needed rabies shots to get our city licenses (so we don't get tickets) all at a cost of $120, I quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Sigh. I try. Oh, I try.

$1.30 went to my change jar.

The Bible in a Year

I am currently in the middle of Leviticus with all of the rituals, offerings, and rules. Wow. And we think we have it rough. All we have to do is obey God when He tells us to do something. I have read through Leviticus 21.

The Favorite Things

On Monday we studied about President's Day and then declared the rest of the day a "Life Skills" Day … aka Get this House Cleaned! I put everybody to work and we got it done in no time! We also had to take the dogs to the vet for their rabies shots.

Riding bikes on Tuesday evening felt oh. so. good. And watching the kids ride their bikes in the parking lot across the street brought back such fond memories of riding bikes as a kid.

It felt so good to actually open the door today and let in some fresh air!

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