"This Week in Review" Thursday

Another busy, busy week! In addition to our homeschool schedule, I was also confronted with a situation with our youngest child who is in kindergarten in our public school. {There are many, many reasons why our other three children still attend public school, especially as it pertains to our younger two who are in 1st grade and kindergarten. I won't go into all of that now. Public school is what is best for them at this time, or we would have them home. We think it is likely that we will bring them home for school  when they are ready to go to middle school, but we will make that decision when the time comes.}

Anyway, our youngest daughter is in kindergarten and has always been a go-getter. She is very smart and needs/wants lots and lots of stimulation, always has. She went to Preschool when she was 3 and Pre-K when she was 4. She is a young kindergartner, but was completely ready and willing to go. She was great for the first month. Then all of a sudden she started crying when I took her to school. She was saying she didn't like the work, but this confused us because when she comes home she does her homework, copies of her brother's homework and anything else I will copy for her. And we have never experienced her crying when going to school before. Ever!

To make an already-long-story-short, we have determined that she is bored at school. She is already doing 1st grade skills on her own at home. I talked with the school counselor and her teacher. And thankfully we have a school that is willing to do whatever it takes to help their students excel. Part of that has been developing an individualized plan for Brynne to do some 1st grade work independently, while the other students in her class are doing their work, in an effort to keep her engaged and interested in school. The other part of the equation is for me to be more present at her school during the day to help her with the crying spells she is experiencing right now. Because of all of that, I have been running back and forth between the elementary school and our school at home most of the week. And I am bushed! Dawson has had to do a lot of independent work, which isn't a completely bad thing.

Here is what we did get accomplished this week:

A World of Adventure ~ This week has involved more predicate and subject work and learning about types of sentences and proper uses of punctuation. We are reading out of Exodus for our literature lessons and Dawson has been making a chart of the 10 Plagues. He also wrote a short scene of a play using the text of Exodus 2. We have added to our life-size timeline that wraps around the top of our wall in our school room. It's been really cool to see the crossover of the biblical and historical events.

Social Studies ~ We did some weather/climate studies and some map work. Otherwise Dawson has been using this time of the day to work on his book that is due tomorrow. The story includes facts about both Ancient Egypt and the desert. Today he embalmed a cartoon figure to get it ready to be mummified. He really enjoyed this simulation. Although it's a cartoon character, it still might be "gruesome" for younger viewers.

Science ~ We completed our experiment of mummifying an apple. Otherwise Dawson has been working non-stop on his book. He has a huge Science test tomorrow afternoon over all he has learned on Deserts, including about 50 vocabulary words.

Fine Arts ~ We ended last week making Papyrus paper. This week it's been all about drawing the illustrations for his book. He also included some photography into his illustrations. More on that later.

Other ~ In Math, we have decided to make a switch to Life of Fred. We have ordered the decimals and fractions books and are hoping they come in by Monday so he can get started on them. I plan to hold onto Saxon to utilize problems for extra practice if he needs it. In Spanish Dawson has been working hard on his oral assignments, workbook pages, guided practice pages and LiveMocha. He is loving Spanish. Typing is still going pretty good. He is getting the hang of his Good Typing lessons. Although Dawson has the third book in the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, he hasn't read any of it this week because of his work on his book. That really has been a time-consuming project.

One last thing, Dawson made a coconut cream pie this week that was to die for!  It was so good!!! He is thinking now of planning an entire meal, including desert, and cooking for the entire family one evening.

We have now completed our unit on Ancient Egypt and Deserts. It has been a fun and exciting and extremely informative unit and I am almost sad to see us leave it. Next week we are on to Ancient Greece and a science study on the body systems, personal health and first aid. Our Bible, literature, language arts and fine arts will all correspond with these topics. This will be another 6-week study.

If you are needing any Ancient Egypt resources, look at my Index of Topics on the sidebar for lots and lots of ideas! Although the base of our assignments and projects came from our A World of Adventure curriculum, I drew many things from other research and from tips from other bloggers. {Thanks to all of you!!} I am hoping to now Pay it Forward.

Dawson bugged out of town to go to the lake with his friend before he got his blogging done, so this post will have to do for Weekly Wrap-up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.