Homeschool Discoveries

It’s been two weeks now since my last full “”weekly highlights” post.  Last Friday and Saturday I was attending our state’s homeschool conference, and by the end of the weekend I just wasn’t up for trying to remember all that we had done the week before.  🙂  So…now I have to try and remember what we’ve done for two weeks!

We’ve had some crazy weather, that’s for sure!

Maybe now we are finally done with snow, and can move on with actual spring.   We are all so ready for nicer weather! Today (the first day of truly warm weather so far this spring),we did a very minimal amount of school work and did some “fun” errands (including a book sale…I love those!), and spent time outside.

Here are a few of our learning highlights from the past two weeks:

1.  – 2.  As usual we’ve been playing lots of RightStart Math games…but it’s a bit of a blur and I can’t remember which ones.  🙂

3.  Mr. E (Age 6, Kindergarten) has been working on beginning multiplication and on learning to tell time to the minute in RightStart C.

4. In Logic of English Foundations, Mr. E is up to Lesson 103.  In the picture he was working on a “silent E sort”  — deciding the reason for the Silent E in a variety of words.  Miss M (Age almost 9, 3rd grade) finished Lesson 33-34 of LoE Essentials in the past two weeks.  This week she had a perfect score on the end of lesson test!

5. – 7.  The past two weeks Mr. K (age 4, Pre-K) has been very into mazes, coloring create-your-own Lego Mini-Figures (I don’t know why I haven’t printed these out before…I guess I kept forgetting!  I think about a dozen of these were colored by the two boys this week!), and lots of pretend play, of course.

8.  Mr.  J (18 months), has been into making messes, of course!

9.-10.   Mr. E finally got to do his Lego Star Wars expert day presentation at co-op (it was postponed from earlier this month when co-op was cancelled due to bad weather).  He did an awesome job!

11.  Miss M is in the drawing/geometry section of RightStart D.  She doesn’t love it as much as she did when we did similar lessons in RightStart C, and she is amazed that I don’t always know exactly how to draw the figures (the manual does not give step-by-step instructions).  I keep reminding her that until the drawing/geometry in RightStart C, I had never even used a triangle or T-square!

12.  After being very interested in Robins and reading a number of books about them, Miss M decided she wanted to make a lapbook about Robins.  She worked on that over the past two weeks and finished it up today.  I’ll give that the attention it deserves in it’s own post sometime next week!

Have a wonderful weekend…we’ll be out enjoying our lovely warm weather!!!!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and The Homeschool Review!

We had a few unexpected happenings this week….

Yes, we got an April snow storm.  The forecast was for such vast quantities of snow that the building our co-op meets in preemptively planned to be closed on Thursday, the day our co-op meets.  So even though we got nowhere near the foot of snow the forecasters said we might get, we still had no co-op.  And the roads in our metro area were definitely icy.  So, Mr. E’s  Star Wars Lego collection was all packed up with no where to go.   He will do expert day later this month instead.

Here are a few other learning highlights from our week:

1.-2: Baking Soda and Vinegar make for a fun rainy snowy afternoon activity.  Even though we’ve done these activities before, it still makes for a fun discussion on various science topics. The kids were thrilled that I gave them a whole bottle of vinegar and a whole box of baking soda and said, “have at it!”

3.  For math this week, Mr. E (Age 6, Kindergarten) continued to review 2 digit addition with Right Start C.  We also hit the lessons with making groups from stars on the flag (pictured) and grouping the dots on a Chinese checker board.  He wasn’t so keen on these activities.  I think this is where his young age for the book comes through — he barely had the patience for the flag, and didn’t have the patience to finish the checker board activity.  I bet it will be a much different story when we hit the checker board again at the end of C (since that will be about a year from now!).

Miss M practiced two digit by two digit multiplication in RightStart D, and did some multiplication and division word problems.  We’re kind of skipping around at this point…next up for her are the drawing lessons at the end of D.

For math games this week, we played Speed (both M and E), Skip Counting Memory (Game P2, both kids), and Find The Two Factors (game P29, just Miss M).

4.  For History and Science we took a few “Rabbit Trails” in our book basket.  We’re studying the Civil War for history, but we spent some time this week zeroed in on a topic of interest — a confederate submarine called the Hunley (Read my post from Thursday to find out about a book that inspired this rabbit trail).   In the science basket, we now have books about backyard birds, as well as books for the unit I planned on Simple Machines. Miss M told me she was really into Robins right now (we have one, pictured in our top collage, that hangs out in one of our trees quite a bit) and wanted to learn more.  So, we found one book devoted to robins, a few books about other birds we have in our yard, and a few books about backyard birds in general.

5.  For Spelling/Phonics this week, Mr. E completed another five lessons of Logic of English Foundations (he’s up to lesson 95 — it’s hard to believe there are only about another 20 lessons left in terms of what is currently written…he’s almost all the way through!).  He liked the assigned reading of “The Foot Book” and also continued with the next chapter of the Little Bear book he started reading last week.  Miss M worked on lesson 32 of Logic of English Essentials.  This wasn’t her best week testing-wise, but at least most of the mistakes were small ones.

In other fun this week…

1.  We took a trip to Minneapolis Central Library downtown this past Sunday.  It’s truly one of my favorite destinations.  🙂  Behind Miss M is the “Milestones Collection” of important first editions or other rare children’s books that don’t circulate.  One of these days Miss M and I want to make a special trip to go to that room and read a couple of out of print Maud Hart Lovelace books that are hard to find.  🙂

2. Kids making individual apple pies

3.  It was my birthday on Tuesday.  We enjoyed these yummy pastries from my favorite bakery for breakfast (and snack, and breakfast the next day).  We didn’t do a lot of special things on the day of my birthday, but Tony did bring me flowers and made us a yummy dinner and dessert!

4. Best “CT” (Cute Toddler or Cute Trouble) chaos moment of the week — helping himself to the stickers from the art cabinet

5.  Isn’t Mr. J a cute Toddler Darth Maul? 🙂

I just realized that Mr. K, the four year old, didn’t appear in any pictures this week!  I think he was too busy playing with Legos and pretending to be a super hero to stay still for any pictures.  😉

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

Things finally seemed more spring-like this week here in Minnesota!  After a nice Easter weekend as a family, Tony left for a trip for most of the week — then he took after afternoon off on Friday after returning home so we could take a whole-family field trip to the MN Zoo!

Here are a few highlights from our week:

1.-2. Simple Machines:  We started a unit on Simple Machines for science.   There are a couple lessons from BFSU Vol. 2 on this topic I meant to look at…but meanwhile, the kids have been busy with library books on the topic and creating their own simple machines (like inclined planes, levers, and pulleys).

3.  Also science-related:  Miss M has taken a real interest in backyard birds, especially robins.  Here the kids are watching a video I found for them about baby robins.  They loved the cute baby birds that seemed always hungry with mouths open wide.  🙂

Not pictured is anything about our new history unit — we started studying the Civil War this week!

4.  Mr E is mostly ready for his turn at “Expert Day” next Thursday at co-op.  He selected, printed, cut and glued pictures on his board.  We also worked together on his 3 minute presentation, and he practiced it for Grandma and for friends.

5.  In Spelling/Phonics this week, Mr. E completed 5 lessons of Logic of English foundations.  He’s up to lesson 90 already!  He liked a list of words early in the week that he turned into two silly sentences: “Mothers have apple seeds.  Birds have buckets.”  (I think mother, apple, seed, bird and bucket were the five words on the list).  Meanwhile Miss M finished lesson 31 of LOE Essentials.

6-7.  Math can sometimes be a struggle for Miss M.  We experience more frustration with math than with any other subject.   We made a few small tweaks this week that I felt really made a big difference for her:  We tried to do math most days earlier in the school day than we have in the past, we put classical music on in the background, a few days I photocopied a section of the teacher’s manual (with answers then blacked out on her copy) for her to “read along” with me, and I was able to identify the fact that one thing that was frustrating her on Thursday was a lack of space for long multiplication problems, so on Friday I taped up a large sheet of paper to do the work on!  I think we “officially” did 3 or 4 lessons of RightStart D this week.  But I am super pleased that Miss M went at the beginning of the week having no idea how to do two digit by two digit multiplication, and by Friday told me it was “easy peasy lemon squeezy”  (a favorite expression of hers).

Mr. E worked on Roman Numerals this week in RightStart C, as well as playing a few games!  Games played this week by Miss M and/or Mr. E included Rows and Columns, Corners, Speed, and a four-digit subtraction game (that I have already forgotten the name of) that proved to be way more fun than I thought it would be!

8.  Most weeks lately we’ve headed to the Gymnastics studio for open gym, but this week we went to an open gym/indoor play area on Monday afternoon (we needed to be out of the house for a bit while some work was being done).  J was thrilled that he could play here too (he’s not old enough to play at the gymnastics open gym.  We also took a trip to Trader Joe’s afterwards as we were quite close by.  We bought some treats and fun food items.  “Cookie Butter” might be one of the tastiest foods ever invented!

9.  Most of our snow has finally melted! Grandma Karen came for a few hours on Thursday, and the kids enjoyed doing sidewalk chalk with Grandma.

Minnesota Zoo Outing:

We enjoyed our trip to the Zoo this afternoon, though the temperature started dropping quickly after we arrived, and by the time we were walking from the “farm” area back to the main buildings, it was snowing!  We weren’t really prepared for the sudden change in the weather, but had fun anyway.

Just for fun…here are some of my favorite pics of  Mr. J, our 17 month old from this week.  Toddlers are such a riot!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

It’s been a more of a non-routine week at our house.  We had a birthday (read an interview with the birthday boy here), Miss M needed to prepare for her Expert Day presentation at co-op, I was tired all week from staying up late for the quarterly editing deadline on the publication I work with, and the weather finally started to warm up a bit…and apparently warm weather makes some students completely unable to think if they are inside a building.  😉

Miss M did a bit of independent work and preparation for Expert Day on Monday, but otherwise, Monday was devoted to celebrating Mr. E’s birthday:

Miss M did her Expert Day project on Dolls this year.  She decided to focus on four “famous dolls” of the 20th century:

We did do a few other things this week:

1.  Dyeing Easter Eggs

2. – 3.  Even though Miss M didn’t do very much of her “regular” school work this week (due to expert day and other distrctions), Mr E still managed to do 4 lessons of RightStart C and 3 lessons from Logic of English Foundations.  The “Silent E” board game was a lot of fun!

4.  With everything going on this week, we decided to take a “fun school” day today — we played Corners, read Life of Fred Butterflies and Grammar Land, and now the big kids are outside playing.

5.  Mr. E also started work on HIS expert day project today.  His class will present at co-op in two weeks.  He is doing a project on Lego Star Wars.  I taught him how to cut and paste from google images so he could find some pictures for his display board.  We also started trying to figure out how many sets have been produced (236 up through 2011, but we’ll have to do some counting of other lists to update that number through 2013).

6.  J really likes his older brother’s new lightsabers.  🙂

7. Lots of Lego building this week as the boys worked on Mr. E’s new sets

8. Cute pic of the three boys — they like to sit on the warm heat vent in the dining room floor early in the morning!

Have a blessed Easter weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

I was almost going to skip on a wrap up this week…it’s getting late and I should be working (I have my quarterly editing deadline coming up in a bit over a week for the publication I work on).  And I have gifts to wrap for a certain boy who’s turning six tomorrow…but I had a lot of great pictures from this week and I didn’t want to forget all about our week by the time another week goes by.  🙂

Here’s some of what was keeping us busy this week:

1. and 2.:  Making a paper mache “Princess Leia Bird” (from Angry Birds Star Wars” for Mr. E’s birthday party.  It could have been a Pinata, but…who wants to smash something like that — that, and it’s not really “pinata weather” here yet!

3. Yes, it snowed again here last Monday! Only about three inches this time!

4. This was the First Day of Spring for 2013.  On the first day of spring in 2012, the kids were climbing the tree in a neighbors yard wearing shorts and t-shirts.  It was an exceptionally early spring last year but….really?  This is an awfully cold start to spring, even for MN!

5. and 6.:  our first Snap Circuits set — an early birthday present for Mr. E from Grandma Karen.  The set is a huge hit!

7. and 8.:  Trip to the Children’s Museum on Tuesday with Grandma.

9.  Mr E’s birthday party with friends on Saturday afternoon.

Despite the busy week, we did get some of our regular school work done too:

1. and 2:  Science for the week consisted mostly of random experiments Miss M (age 8.5, 3rd grade) picked out from some physics experiment books we found at the library, watching Magic School Bus and playing with Mr. E’s new snap circuit set.  All told, I think it was a lot of science learning even though it really wasn’t very “planned” on my part.  🙂

3.  Miss M has been busily preparing for her “Expert Day” presentation at co-op…it’s coming up this Thursday.  Here she is searching google images for pictures of the dolls she is talking about in her presentation.

4.  and 5.:  Mr. K (age 4, Pre-K) is keeping busy with Kumon cutting books, Preschool busy bags, and his Little Lambs preschool art book.

6.  Mr. E writing spelling words on the magnadoodle board.  He  completed three lessons in Logic of English Foundations.  Miss M had a review week in Logic of English Essentials.  She didn’t feel as confident as we had hoped she might on her review words, so we may take another review week before moving on to lesson 31.

7.  In math this week, Mr. E completed a couple more lessons of RightStart C — still mostly review.  Miss M worked on fractions in Right Start D.  I just love how RightStart presents fractions.  It makes me fall in love with RightStart all over again, even if it is not a perfect fit for Miss M’s learning style.

8. and 9.:  I feel like we are having a bit of a math game renaissance here.   I am finally after multiple years with RS as my math curriculum being convinced that the games really are excellent practice and worth making time for.   Mr. E and I played “Go to the Dump” and Advanced Addition War.  Miss M and I played the fraction game “One” as well as multiple games of Fraction War.

The weekend is over and we are looking forward to another busy week with Mr. E’s birthday, Miss M’s expert day at co-op, Easter weekend and my editing deadline!  I still hope to sneak in a post or two on the blog…but if I don’t, you’ll know why!!!

Linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners!

So, raise your hand if you are still tired in the mornings even though it is has been almost a week since the Daylight Savings time change???  I know we certainly are.   Surprisingly enough, Monday wasn’t too bad — we prepared for our day the night before and even got an early start on school.  It was all the other days that we had a hard time getting going.  Hopefully next week will be easier in that department!

First a few schoolwork highlights from this week:

1. History:  Miss M (age 8, 3rd grade) has been reading like crazy about slavery and the underground railroad the last two weeks.  One book didn’t even make it in the picture, so she has read 13 books from the book basket already for this unit.  Given her speedy reading pace, we’ll probably only spend about another week or so on this topic.  I’ve read a couple of these picture books aloud to the boys and hope to read a few more to them next week.

2. Bible:  I don’t mention it very often in my weekly wrap-ups, but the kids read or listen to the Bible each day.  Miss M reads from her own Bible while the boys listen to the Bible using the YouVersion app for iPad.  Mr. K (age 4) doesn’t always listen, but Mr. E (almost 6, Kindergarten) looks forward to Bible time every day.  Sometimes he just listens, sometimes he listens while eating breakfast or snack, and sometimes (like today) he draws a picture while listening.  The picture wasn’t related to the Bible reading though — it was a picture of an imaginary Star Wars battle scene.  🙂

3. Math Games:  I played Bead Card Memory (a RightStart A game) with Mr K on Monday night while the big kids were at a volunteer opportunity with Tony at our neighborhood boys and girls club.   I played Addition Old Main with Mr. E this week and Multiplication Old Main (both RightStart games as well) with Miss M.

4. Math Lessons:  Mr. E started RightStart C and completed lessons 1-5, which are all review.  He is enjoying making an addition table.  Miss M started the Fractions chapter in Math Mammoth 3-B.  It was mostly review with a few new concepts and a few “old” concept presented differently. Miss M really took issue with Math Mammoth using the term “pie models” (RightStart doesn’t use these at all) to describe fraction models that weren’t circular.  “Mom, pies are NOT shaped liked hexagons, octagons or pentagons!”.  LOL!

5. Spelling/Phonics/Reading:  Mr.  E finished 4 lessons of Logic of English Foundations.   He isn’t always too excited about the reading that comes with the curriculum (he would rather read a real book), but I have him read some of the Foundations workbook exercises anyway.  This week we discovered that reading with a hi-liter in hand made reading it SO much more exciting!  He chose to highlight all the long vowels and two letter phonograms after he read each sentence.  Miss M worked on lesson 29 of Logic of English Essentials for spelling.  This was probably her hardest list ever in this program, and she got more wrong than right on the test.  Good thing next week is a review week so we have time for more practice on the ti/ci/si phonogram words!   Mr. K just practiced his phonograms with the LoE app this week.

Science (not pictured):  I’m starting to see a pattern in our science studies…the weeks I teach the 1st/2nd grade science at co-op, I have a hard time pulling together a different lesson at home.  So, my kids got a review of BFSU 1 lessons D-1 and D-7 on gravity, as well as watching a bunch of youtube videos on the topic and a magic schoolbus episode about gravity. We watched a couple other Magic Schoolbus episodes as well.  Next week, we’ll be back to a lesson in BFSU Vol. 2.

On Thursday, we celebrated Pi Day at home (and I celebrated at c0-op with my science class):

Most of our celebrating this year was of the eating variety, but we did re-read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.  🙂 I brought the “pi pie” (blueberry in flavor) to co-op for my students along with a store-bought turtle pie.  My family wasn’t too disappointed that I brought home most of the blueberry pie.  Miss M made the Pumpkin pie in the lower right corner with just a bit of help from me with the pesky can opener and moving the over-full pie to the oven.   “CT” Mr. J (“Cute Trouble”, 16 months old),  helped himself to the lid of the pie filling can (don’t worry – it wasn’t sharp!) and an empty-but-for-a-few-crumbs bag of sugar for a tasty treat while I was a bit too focused on helping Miss M with her pie.

The kids had a lot of opportunities to be creative this week:

1.  Miss M created a Pirate disguise, inspired by an Usborne arts and crafts book

2. We attended the monthly Family Day at the Minneapolis Institute of Art last Sunday.  This month’s theme was “cityscapes,” so we made skyscraper hats!

3. Besides playing math games while his big siblings were gone on Monday night, he got to bake cookies!  Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies from a cookie mix are just the right speed for a 4-year-old, and he could do almost all the work himself!

4.  and 5.  With just a tiny hint of spring this week (aka, temperatures above freezing in the mid to high 30s a couple of days), the kids begged to make mud pies.  I let them, despite the mess it caused requiring immediate baths and laundry afterwards!

6.  With the leftovers from her pumpkin pie, Miss M created this cute mini-pie and a couple of “cinnamon pie crust rolls”.   Those treats were her personal Pi Day dessert!

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

It was a busy week for us…even though we mostly stayed home!  We had a ton of fun and learning (and I took so many pictures that it took me four collages to share all the pictures I wanted to share!).

First, Congrats to Mr. E on finishing RightStart Math Level B!  We finished up the last few lessons this week, culminating in the “year end test” today…followed by a celebration at a new-to-us doughnut shop on the way home from Miss M’s guitar lesson:

Now, I do have to say that Mr. E’s understanding and level of proficiency as a not-quite-six year old Kindergartener is not as great as Miss M’s was when she finished level B as a seven-year-old 1st grader.   He doesn’t have the same maturity in writing skills, or the patience to practice the math skills.  But conceptually he gets bored easily.   :-).  Level C contains a fair amount of review at the beginning we can use to solidify some of these concepts, and I am going to try my best to not speed through this level with him (taking the time to play more games and maybe some tangents into more problem-solving oriented supplements).

Here are few more of our learning highlights from this week:

1-2.  I took the plunge and started BFSU Vol 2. with my kids.  I picked lesson C-9 to start with on Center of Gravity.   The kids enjoyed these fun “tricks” we saw first in a YouTube video.

3.  We spent quite a while on afternoon curled up on the couch reading picture books.  I can’t remember the last time I did that with all the kids together (though J didn’t stick around for most of it.)  🙂

4-5.  Mr. E completed lessons 71-74 of Logic of English Foundations, and Miss M did lesson 28 in LoE Essentials.   Mr. E’s favorite part of the week was playing phonogram bingo.  Miss M is more excited than she was last week about the Phonogram app, and Mr. K seems to be “getting” the app a bit more.  Unlike last week, Mr. E wasn’t excited about the phonogram app at all!

6.  I got out a preschool art/activity book called Baby Lambs for Mr. K this week.  I bought it a year or two back for Mr. E but missed the right window of age/skill for him to use it.  It seems like a great book right at the moment for Mr. K to keep busy while I am working with his older siblings.  I am still struggling with finding time to do any LoE Foundations with him.

7. With Miss M for math this week, we continued to work on Division with Math Mammoth 3-B, and played a few RightStart multiplication and division games.

8-9. I worked with Miss M on baking this week.  She made these biscuits and bread nearly all by herself with just a bit of coaching from me.

Snow Fun…

The kids are thrilled that our winter is turning out to be so snowy.  We got another 8 or 9 inches of snow this week!  Even I got outside to play.  🙂

And just for fun, here are a few more snapshots of our week…

Row 1: J showing off his coloring, “Magnet People”, Snow Ice Cream

Row 2: Lego creations, puzzles, silly fun

Row 3:  Baby J isn’t much of a “baby” these days…his new nickname here is “CT” (which stands for either “Cute Toddler” or “Cute Trouble” depending on what he’s doing!

Have a happy weekend!  Don’t forget that next Thursday is Pi Day (it’s one of my favorite random holidays…read my post from last year if you are looking for celebration ideas!).

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!

I couldn’t really think of one unifying theme for the week, so the title reflects the potpourri of things I’m thinking about as I write a post to wrap up our week.

Remember last week, when the neighbor kids helped our kids build a little fort in the snow? The next day, Tony helped our kids mound up a whole bunch of snow, which the kids dug out in to a really cool fort (or a “hut” as they insist upon calling it!).  The hut and surrounding paths and small forts were the site of much play this week (and neighbor friends joining in for the outside play again today):

Here are a few of our learning highlights this week:

1. Mr. E (Kindergarten) and I played a game of Subtraction Corners early in the week, then Miss M (3rd grade) joined Mr. E and I as well for a game of adding corners today.  We’ve never played corners with more than two players but it works just fine!

2.  Mr. E continued to practice subtraction with Right Start B, and wanted “more worksheets”, so here he is doing some subtraction in a Singapore 1-A workbook I keep on hand for just such occasions. :-).  We also did a bit of work in RS B on making change and reading thermometers and scales.  Mr. E is just about done with B…maybe another week and we’ll be on to Level C.   Miss M continued with division practice with Math Mammoth 3-B this week.  I didn’t really “push” too hard on the math front this week, so we’ll still be working on division next week for at least part of the week.

3.  All three of the older kids tried out the new Logic of English phonogram practice app that was released this week.  I think it hits Mr. E’s interests and abilities most closely.  Even though Miss M still needs practice on some of her phonograms, she thought the game play of the app was a bit boring.  Mr E really liked it and found it helpful, while it seemed a bit tricky for Mr. K (age 4, preschool), who is just starting to learn all his lower case letters and their phonogram sounds.

4.  It was a co-op week for us…I taught a lesson on magnets for my class of 1st and 2nd graders, so that meant my kids got a bit of a review on magnets as well.  Though I had great intentions of also starting a lesson from BFSU Volume 2 with my kids, preparing my lesson for co-op (plus helping Miss M put a few finishing touches on her Rocks and Minerals labpook) seemed to take all the science-related energy I had this week.

5.  We finished reading Life Of Fred: Apples today.  Life of Fred is like “math dessert”…everyone loves it so much!  We’ll start Butterflies, the second book, next week.  Miss M started expressing interest in doing a bit more writing so I bought Write On! and we got a start with two lessons from that book this week (I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once we’ve tried out a few more lessons).

6.  Mr. E drawing a comic strip (inspired by the “Your turn to play” questions in the last chapter of Life of Fred: Apples).

7. Sketch/Scribble art and a sentence by Miss M..The start of Write On! project #4.

Have a great weekend!

 
I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!

Last February I remember feeling like we really needed a bit of a break around President’s day.  We had a few special things going on so we ended up taking a bit of an “unplanned” break at this time last year.   With that experience in mind, though, I planned a “mini-break” for President’s Day weekend this year.  We had a fun day last Friday, and didn’t do any regular schoolwork Monday-Wednesday this week.  With a light day last Thursday, it essentially amounted to one week of work stretched over two weeks. 🙂

On Monday, Tony had off for President’s Day.  The kids were excited to finally take Daddy with us to The Works (a small science/engineering museum), followed by a special family dinner out to a Chinese buffet restaurant.

Tuesday, the kids enjoyed a relaxed morning playing at home, followed by a long-requested trip to Homeschool Open Gym at the Gymnastics gym the kids had a class at in the fall.  Mr. K is finally old enough to participate, so I think we’ll be going more often the rest of this spring.  My mom came for a visit on Wednesday.  She is planning to take each of the kids out in turn on special outings. Miss M picked a shopping trip with Grandma a couple weeks ago.  This week was Mr. E’s turn, and he picked a trip to an indoor Archery range!

Then Thursday and Friday it was back to business as usual.  It went better than I expected for only having a two-day school week.

• Miss M started the Division chapter in Math Mammoth 3B, and Mr. E did lessons from Right Start B on greater than/less than and Subtraction.  We also read aloud from Life of Fred Apples.  Only two chapters left!
• Mr E did two lessons of Logic of English Foundations, and Miss M wrapped up List #26 in Logic of English Essentials.  Spreading a spelling lesson over two weeks was not good for Miss M however, and she did much more poorly than usual.
• We continued readings for US History focusing on 1815-1860, especially the pioneers.  Miss M read “Sarah, Plain and Tall” and started the sequel, “Skylark“.  We also started “Bound for Oregon” as a bedtime read aloud and “A Pioneer Sampler” for daytime history reading.
• We’re really wrapping up our science unit on Rocks and Minerals.  All we have left is for Miss M to make a cover for her lapbook and maybe add a few pictures in the extra space. 🙂

Here are a few more photo highlights from our week:

Clockwise starting in upper left (whoops, forgot to number the pictures this week!):

• Mr E proudly shows off his very first archery target
• More snow! An additional almost six inches of snow brought the neighbor kids out to our backyard for snow fort building in the late afternoon on Friday.  Seven kids worked together to make a huge fort!
• Having fun with legos during during our break
• Mr. E in a basket…with a paper phone?!?  All the kids ran around with paper phones pretending to talk on them and “install apps.”  Who knew paper phones could be so much fun?
• Miss M practicing her guitar.  She is continuing to enjoy lessons and improve steadily!
• Nearly complete Rocks and Minerals lapbook

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!