Weekly Wrap-up ~ Summer Week 4

Although I am certainly not glad that Brynne has been having back problems, her need to shut down her sporting activities has sure made this a peaceful week! This was Rick's week to work in Oklahoma, Dawson has been working, Dawson's friend (and our new live-in "son") Chad went back to Oklahoma to get more of his belongings, and Kyndal has been tired this week so has been snuggled up in her own home. It has just been Eli, Brynne, and me the majority of the time with no out-of-the-house activities. We have done school for a few hours each morning, had personal time most of the afternoon and evening, and have turned on the Kansas City Royals versus St. Louis Cardinals games every evening. The kids have played their video games while I have read and watched baseball. Like I said, it was a much-needed very quiet week! Perfection!

The kids actually enjoy doing their Learning Bridge 6-7 activity pages each day. I don't know why I didn't think of using this product earlier. They are covering a wide variety of concepts each week, some things they have done in the past and some they haven't.

This week we covered the following concepts:

• long division
• ratio word problems
• adding and subtracting decimals
• graphing coordinates
• proverb sentence completions and meanings
• subject/verb agreements
• using glossaries
• concrete and abstract nouns
• foreign word definitions
• reading comprehension
• anagrams
• context clues definitions
• scientist definitions
• creating cartoon strips demonstrating respect and disrespect
• creative writing: superpowers

I think the kids are enjoying the variety of concepts they are covering. Any product that gets Eli excited about creative writing is a winner in my book!

This week we read the majority of The BFG by Roald Dahl. We saw a preview for the movie when we saw The Jungle Book a couple of weeks ago. I always like for us to read the book before we see a movie or play based on the book. Brynne said today that she wasn't really looking forward to the book, but she has really liked it! I always do creative voices when I read aloud. I started out speaking in a deep voice for the BFG, but Brynne told me that his voice didn't sound like that in the movie preview. Instead, they have ended up getting something that sounds a little like Yoda. It's been a fun book, and I am looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation of it.

Both kids continue to read out of their personal books, Brynne from the Warrior Cats series and Eli from the Gregor the Overlander series. I have had the pleasure of finishing a couple of different books this week.

I have also spent some time this week doing some planning for fall. I ordered some of our curriculum that will be coming in soon (Greek mythology and astronomy ... FUN!). I mapped out our schedule of educational days for the whole year so that I can be sure to get us our breaks throughout the school year we always look forward to and to complete our school year by the end of April.) We are studying Missouri history this year so I made a list (with tentative dates) of field trips for us to take throughout the state a couple of Fridays a month. We have some really fun things planned!!

And that was our week! Simple. Succinct. Summer perfection.

2016/2017 Hours Completed: 64 hours 15 minutes, with 34 hours 45 minutes outside the home.