Weekly Wrap-up ~ YIPPEEE! Nothing Exciting!

Ahhh ... a (semi) normal week! Well, after Monday. Brynne woke up with a fever, sore throat, headache and vomited first thing. We took care of her all day. She was all better on Tuesday morning. (God bless green tea, ibuprofen, and the privilege to be homeschoolers so we could all just rest!)

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, however, we were able to get into our regular schedule. (Well, Kyndal did come back home from school on Wednesday because she was sick AGAIN and we finally were able to determine from more blood testing that she is severely anemic and has the virus that causes mono. She's out of school until after Thanksgiving. We were able to continue on with school, though.) We started each day with Bible learning about Jacob and Esau. I love our stick-figuring through the bible lessons with Grapevine Studies. Excellent!

Our writing program had the kids writing five-sentence paragraphs about the color of their choice. Brynne chose blue and Eli chose red. We had some struggles with Introduction and Conclusion, but worked it out as a group.

In math we did some double-digit mental math review and learned about quadrilaterals, opposite, and adjacent.

We are reading Stuart Little. They don't seem to be into it as much as they were with James and the Giant Peach. All they keep doing is comparing it to the movie. We will finish it, though. I think we might move onto Shiloh next.

For grammar we spent the week doing some Rainbow Sentences (building the sentences and then writing down the subject, verb, and prepositional phrase) and then did some reading comprehension on Samson's Classroom. We are eagerly awaiting our Cozy Grammar materials that a sweet friend has agreed to loan us!

With the happening of life, art and nature have taken a backseat. We did spend quite a bit of time observing our red squirrels that live in our oak tree in front of our house. They are precious! Brynne has named them Fiesty and Derek. We observed how they run around the tree in a spiral, how they climb down the tree head first, and how they hold their acorns with their shorter front legs to eat. These were all things we learned about last week when studying squirrels at the park. They are so playful and really fun to watch! And it helps that they are in the tree right outside the window so the kids can sit on the back of the couch and observe whenever they want. The dogs help us know when they are there.

Our geographical study had us focusing on Japan this week. We have had a lot of fun.

We colored the Japanese Flag, which symbolizes the "Land of the Rising Sun". We read lots of facts about Japan from Facts for Kids - Japan that led us to watch some Sumo wrestling on Youtube and watch an episode of "Sagwa: the Japanese Siamese Cat" to see an example of Japanese calligraphy.

The library didn't get all my books in, so we only read a couple this week. The first one was
Yuki and the One Thousand Carriers by Gloria Whelan. This was an excellent book with lots of geographical and cultural facts, as well as loaded with Haikus. We will be tackling the Haiku after Thanksgiving when we resume our studies. The other book was a sweet one called Rise and Shine, Mariko-chan by Chiyoko Tomioka. We learned some of the Japanese names for family and that "chan" and "san" added to the end of a name is a way of expressing endearment, like saying "my dear". "Chan" is for children and "San" is for adults and people of influence. Based on this, Daniel on the "Karate Kid" should have been Daniel-chan instead of Daniel-san, just saying.

Another favorite activity was the crayon resist map we did of the Japanese islands that illustrated their topography. This was a lesson from Ellen McHenry and was our Favorite Resource this Week.

Eli started not feeling well by yesterday afternoon. He had a sore throat and was coughing last night. With daddy coming today FOR 10 DAYS we are going to spend the morning preparing for his arrival and the afternoon going "to town" for groceries.

We are hoping that he wil be feeling better so that we can go on our field trip tomorrow night to eat sushi! The kids want to try it, and daddy loves it. So, it's a win-win, except that I don't like sushi so I'll be eating something else. We have chosen a versatile restaurant.

As we are planning to pretty much take the week off next week, except for some odds and ends, you may not be hearing from us until after Thanksgiving. Enjoy your time with your family. I know that we will! (And we will be celebrating my daughter's 18th birthday and my son's 9th birthday. Lots going on!)

Linking up with week with:
Weekly Wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
That's a Wrap at Hammock Tracks
Favorite Resource this Week at Learning ALL the time!