Weekly Wrap-up ~ Mix it Up (Prairie Primer - Long Winter Weeks 2 and 3)

(Well, I typed this on Friday but am just now getting it posted. We've got a busy life with Spring in the air!)

It's Freedom Friday around here! (Why, oh why, didn't I think of this earlier?!). The kids are currently in their rooms reading, where they have been for the past 45 minutes. Their math assignments are done. And other than watching CNN Student News, they have the rest of the day to learn on their own. The weather has turned sunny and warmer so I imagine that will include some outside time. I hope so.

Me? I've been working on getting together photos of Dawson for his high school graduation senior slide show. In just over two months my boy will be a high school graduate.

This week we have mixed things up a bit. Brynne has added a program to her week on Tuesdays and Thursdays called Girls on the Run. She trains with other 4th-6th graders at the elementary school for a 5K coming up in May. Not only that, but they learn about healthy living and body image. It's a great program.

While she is there from 3-4:30 each Tuesday and Thursday, Eli and I are hanging out at the library. He really enjoys the computers there where he can explore world geography and other things. He calls me over to the computer every few minutes to show me what he has learned. On Thursday afternoons he will also be taking the Lewis and Clark class again (that he and Brynne took last year). He loves Ms. Nicole and her programs.

We had a public school snow day on Wednesday. When Dawson is home it's just hard to do schoolwork because he is fun to hang out with! We had a stressful day that day with some life issues so we decided to declare a day of JOY instead! The whole family just hung out together watching t.v. and eating pizza. We needed to be together.

All week we just carried on with the usual school stuff ... Bible, current events, grammar, math (Roman numerals), personal reading, and The Long Winter read aloud.

Our unit study topic this week was mixtures and solutions. We started out by watching a video by Brain Strew about mixtures and solutions. It was pretty good. Then we did some demonstrations of  mixtures using play dough.

We did some activities with Mixing Solutions and Making Potions. And then we demonstrated homogenous and heterogenous solutions using a recipe (zucchini muffins). Yum! Kitchen science is fun!

One last exciting thing for us this week is that Brynne's basketball team played in a basketball tournament his weekend and they won first place! It was a great way to end the season.

We have one more week of school before Spring Break. We were planning to go to Florida the first week in April, but with our trip to Kyndal and Collin's destination wedding in Cozumel in May, we cancelled that trip. We are just going to celebrate a week off with our public schools and Dawson instead. On Thursday of next week we are going to Tulsa for the weekend, however, to see Daddy and other family. We are also going on a fun field trip with our Okie friends on Friday. School always seems to happen even when we plan to take some time off.

We appear to be right on track to finish up our school year at the end of April. Chance has it that there is a pioneer days school field trip event on May 1st so we are going with some friends. That will be a fun way to end our year! We will take off the entire month of May (have I mentioned we have a high school graduation and wedding that month?) and will do our summer school schedule in June and July.

It's been a great year!!