Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Magical!

As I sit here on Thursday night, I realize that WE DID IT! We had a full, successful week! I am exhausted but so excited! It has been magical! Dang! I realize that it's Monday and I still haven't gotten my wrap-up done for last week. Darn beautiful weather and desire to get ahead of the business of the week!!

I still stand on the premise that our week last week was Magical! It was the kind of week I wish we could have every week.

Dawson ~ 9th Grade

I attribute a lot of our success last week to recognizing that we needed to camp out on a topic. We could have moved on to the next topic in science, but I felt like we could use one more week of reinforcing the concepts involved with Cells. And I am so glad we did!

First, I found a great site called Quizlet that has previously prepared flashcards on all of the parts of the cells. Dawson practiced with the tools, played some games, and took a test. Then he did a plant cell virtual microscope lab, and we had some great discussions about it. Since I don't know a lot about this topic myself, there were times when I would ask a question and he would teach me! (Ahhhhh ... I stumbled across another teaching tool ... be act dumb, ask him questions, and have him explain things to me. We did this more than once this week.) And, to have a little fun, I checked out a Bill Nye the Science Guy dvd about cells for him to watch. He still loves those videos! I know that we are ready to move on now!!

Algebra is going fantastic with Life of Fred! His grammar is moving along easily, and I have been more than impressed with his essays written as a part of his IEW program.

In History, Dawson has been concentrating on Lewis and Clark. He has done some map studies and done assignments provided by PBS. The questions are thought-provoking and the map comparisons are excellent!

We started The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith (a story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition told by Captain Smith's dog). It's kind of fun to read this with our dogs sitting there staring at us. Makes us wonder what they would say out loud if they could!

Dawson also finished up some notebooking pages on Valley Forge, the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington and Daniel Boone. He learned a disappointing fact about Daniel Boone ... there is no proof he ever work a coonskin hat!

Dawson just had such a great attitude this week, working hard and appearing eager to learn. All's well again. And, of course, guitar is going well.

Brynne ~ 2nd Grade

Things continue to move along nicely for Brynne. She loves to learn so just moves easily through her day.

The main focuses of Brynne's week were Nutrition and the State of Kansas. These two topics ended up going hand-in-hand, as Kansas is a huge farming state and the largest producer of wheat in the United States.

The topic of nutrition has come at a perfect time, because Brynne has gotten a little chunky as of late and it's time that she start learning about good food choices and the importance of physical activity. I inputted Brynne's height, weight, and age onto a chart that revealed that she is overweight! Now, I take that with a grain of salt, of course, but the fact that her BMI was in the 85th percentile did cause me some concern. All of our other kids are tall and super skinny with super-fast metabolisms. By this age, they were completely over being chunky. Brynne, however, is shorter, stockier, heavier, and has an obvious slower metabolism. I don't want to get hung up on that, and don't want her to either, so learning about nutrition as a natural part of our school lessons couldn't have come at a better time.

She made a Food Pyramid and played a fun game called Blast Off! to help reinforce the concepts. We have talked about it a lot and it is obvious that she understands the concepts clearly. And, just talking about the importance of physical activity has had her outside multiple times a day getting exercise.

All of Brynne's other lessons are coming along nicely and at a leisurely and perfect pace. I cannot be happier with how her school year is going. So far she has independently read 25 books on her own. Some are shorter readers, some are chapter books. Her goal is to read 100 books this school year, although I know it will be more than that.


And, of course, we had another great art project this week! We learned about Paul Klee and his combination of oils and watercolors. Dawson and Brynne made "Magical Sea Creature" paintings. They sketched fish and underwater plants and colored them with oil pastels. Then they painted over their entire pictures with watercolors. The watercolor attached to the paper, but not the oil pastel fish and plant life.

Brynne's Magical Sea Creatures

Dawson's Koi Fish

At our 5th Friday Fun Day at Co-op, the kids got to dive into the Magical world of Bubbles! The Tulsa Children's Museum came and did a series of presentations called "Pop! The Art and Science of Bubbles". It was a lot of fun!

We are linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, albiet late!