Weekly Wrap-up ~ HOMEschooling

What a great and much-needed week! Why so great? We spent it at HOME actually HOMEschooling!

See us there? We are at HOME! (And I look horrid
because I was recovering from the time change AND
extra innings that brought home the crown for our
KC Royals the night before!)

This pretty much sums up my Monday.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in running around and seeing and experiencing all because we are homeschoolers and we can! And if you read my wrap-ups regularly, you have seen that we have been out and about a great deal during the last month. Although that is lots of fun and very educational, I find that we need these weeks where we stay snuggled up in comfy clothes with books and clipboards in hand getting some of those 3R's accomplished. Sometimes you just gotta do your math!

And this week we did just that. And it felt good!

Reading

Sometimes I feel like all we do is read. We read out loud, we read together, we read alone, we read history, we read literature, and we read fluff just for fun. We read and we learn.

The Chronicles of Narnia. This week we completed The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Next week we move on to The Horse and His Boy. Such a great series. So great. And the Biblical applications. Talk about some great discussions.

Under the Blood Red Sun. In our study of WWII we are reading this piece of historical fiction. Another great selection. We also have the newly released movie to watch when we have finished the book, and I will be writing a review on it. Today's reading left us with the attack on Pearl Harbor from the perspective of the main character, a young Japanese boy residing in Hawaii. Heavy.

McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader. Oh, I am still so glad that I decided to have us read a piece out of McGuffey's each day. It has exposed my kids to such great writing, schools of thought, and grammar. The kids have asked why we read it, and all I can say to them is that someday they will look back and be so glad that we did.

Personal Reading. Eli is still reading from the series of How to Train Your Dragon. He is on the fourth book of eleven. Brynne has almost completed the fifth book in the Warrior Cats series (Erin Hunter) and will be reading the last book in the next week or so. They both love these series! It is so great to watch your children enjoy reading! Somedays they say, "Can't we just read the rest of the day?"

Writing

It was nice this week to take our time with our spelling lessons (ie/ei rules from Soaring with Spelling), daily grammar with Fix-It Grammar, Robin Hood, and copywork out of McGuffey's (again, the kids may not notice the benefit in copying out of this, but the consistency in copying excellent writing will be a great benefit to them in the coming years).

Arithmetic

We have successfully moved through our lessons on adding fractions from word problems. I have been so proud of the improvement in their abilities to accomplish this concept. Fractions is not easy work, but they are doing so well. We only have two more lessons left in Mastering Fifth Grade Math Volume 2, and I need to get Volume 3 ordered asap. They will be learning multiplying and dividing fractions in the next volume.

Science

We had some fun with science this week in doing some lessons on Light.

We learned about reflection, refraction, and absorption with some videos (Bill Nye and Study Jams) and with cool activities. The rainbow paper was especially awesome!

The old reverse arrow, bending pencil, and which rock is hotter activities.

And we learned about phosphorescence and bioluminescence doing another cool activity.

History

The decision to study WWII this year was a good one! This week we began learning about the Japanese role in the war, and introduced the attack on Pearl Harbor. We watched the Infamy speech by FDR on Youtube. Short and sweet. They were lying to us. They ambushed us. It's on.

The Victory Garden - Enrichment Class

This week we read a couple more chapters out of our book and then they worked on a Pearl Harbor crossword puzzle together. They worked on teams again, boys and girls, and had to research the answers. I am not sure how much the public school kids get to work in teams at school, but that is something that is difficult to do in homeschooling. It has been great to see my two working on a team project in our enrichment class.

Freedom Friday

We have settled into a good routine on Fridays. In the morning we finish up anything we didn't get completed during the week, the kids do some extra reading out of their personal books, and then they spend time working on their Minecraft and Roller Coaster Tycoon assignments. Starting next week they will also be working on their Dog Psychology 101 and Astronomy 101 self-paced online classes. This week Brynne started a new Minecraft class all about Albert Einstein. Eli finished up some activities in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and next week will also move onto some assignments about Albert Einstein, doing more hands-on activities from a fun kit I purchased. It's nice to be able to leave them home alone to do their work while Kyndal and I go to do our grocery shopping. They have truly upped their game in the area of responsibility this year.

Extra Activities

Basketball season has begun for Brynne. I am really excited about this season because I think the coaching is going to be excellent! To me, good coaching is so much better than good players. I am looking forward to the season.

Eli and Brynne have also started their third bowling season. The Cobras bowl for two hours each Saturday morning preparing for one of our favorite weekends of the year: state bowling tournament. That is always a lot of fun! We get to travel, stay in a hotel, do some shopping, go out to dinner, swim in the hotel pool, and do lots of bowling! Again, I am looking forward to a great year!

And I was a BAD blogging mom and never got our Halloween post up! So, here are some pics of our costumes on Halloween night. We had a great time collecting candy up and down Main Street in our town and at the Baptist Church trunk-or-treat, going door-to-door, and eating hot dogs at the Methodist Church. I like the way our town does Halloween. It's safe, short and sweet, and provides just enough candy to make everyone happy. It was a great night!

Eli was James Bond. Brynne was a Pokemon trainer. Kyndal was a sexy Bambi, and Collin hunted her down.

We also had family portraits taken, for the first time since 2008! And it was raining the whole time. The previews are amazing! I can't wait to see the rest and get the photos up on the wall.

2015-2016 Hours Logged - 284 1/2 hours out of 1,000 required hours (84 1/2 hours outside home)
Plus 167 Summer Hours

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We are linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Mary at Homegrown Learners.