Weekly Wrap-up ~ Mush!

Seriously, I just can't seem to get my Weekly Wrap-ups done these days! This one is going to cover three weeks, so hold onto your hats. We have had some slow and steady days at home with our noses to the grind getting our basic studies done. We have had some days where we have concentrated on some fun unit studies. And we have had one day when we went on a really great field trip.

Current events, reading, copywork, spelling, grammar, math, and personal reading happens almost every day. Our mornings usually consist of tackling all of these subjects.

We read out loud every single day. The kids read aloud from McGuffey's, we have completed Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, and are still reading Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

Brynne continues to read daily out of the Warriors books by Erin Hunter. She is currently reading Dark River, but will quickly be moving onto the next book. She reads these fast! Eli finished the 8th book in the How to Train your Dragon series and decided that he would like to move onto something else for a while. He is getting ready to start Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins.

In our WWII studies, we have been moving slowly through the Holocaust. We finished Schindler's List. That was a tough thing to watch with kids so young, but we did it slowly and deliberately talking through all of the atrocities but also the hope and joy provided by Oskar Schindler.

As a family we went to see the movie Race about Jesse Owens running in the Olympics during WWII. That led us into watching the original scenes from Leni Riefenstahl's documentary "Olympia".

Did you know Dr. Suess was involved in WWII propaganda? On his birthday on March 2nd, we concentrated on this aspect of his life. We watched the Youtube video called "Dr. Suess: The Untold Story" and completed a worksheet about him provided by the WWII Museum. Then we watched videos of his created character, Private Snafu.

Do you follow the Iditarod? We do every single year. Several years ago there was a documentary about the famous sled race that really got us into it and excited to follow some of favorite mushers. Each year we each pick one to win and then track their progress through the race. In addition to following the race this year, Eli completed a lapbook from Homeschool in the Woods called "Iditarod" and Brynne completed one called "Sled Dogs". We also watched Balto this year.

Back on President's Day we spent the day learning all about Missouri's President Harry S. Truman. We watched the movie Truman to get us ready for a field trip to Independence, Missouri, his hometown. We finally took that field trip this past week. We toured the grounds of his family farm, watched a video at the visitor's center, went on a tour of his wife's family home on Delaware Street, toured the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, ate lunch at his favorite diner Dixon's Chili, and then ended our day with phosphates and ice cream at Clinton's Drugstore which was Harry S. Truman's first job.

On St. Patrick's Day we learned a little and had a little fun. We watched a video called "Bet You Didn't Know" all about St. Patrick. We then read a great short story written by a homeschool student called "St. Patrick: Sower of Light in Ireland". We went through the timeline of his life, and then did a mapping assignment about Ireland. These materials were provided free by Knowledge Quest. We also played a fun dice and drawing game called "Let's Roll a Leprechaun" (even daddy and I got in on the fun) and watched a cute Hallmark movie called "The Magical Legend of the Leprechaun".

We are still having our enrichment class every week, studying about recycling and energy conservation. We made cootie catchers with facts about both, and this week we made specific pledges about specific things we will do to accomplish each.

And that's a little of what we have been up to the last three weeks.

We are exactly where I wanted us to be at this juncture in our school year. We have two weeks of school left before we take a trip to Atlanta, Florida, and New Orleans. When we get home we will have about two more weeks of school before we take our May break. I think I might be ready for the school year to be over. How about you?

2015-2016 Hours Logged - 778 1/4 hours out of 1,000 required hours (248 hours outside home)
Plus 83 Summer Hours