This week 3/7 - 3/11/2011

This week has been a busy one - something going on just about every day!

Monday - A pretty regular school day. Abigail discovered that it was loads of fun to make soap bubbles with her hands - and the bathroom floor got some cleaning in the process! Also, when dh & I arrived home from small group, we were greeted with the wonderful smell of Erin's yummy soft pretzels!

Tuesday - Short school day - drama class for Erin that afternoon. She has been practicing hard to learn her part - Lady in Waiting. One of her biggest challenges is to overcome her very country accent so that she sounds like a refined "lady". Haha!

Wednesday - Revamped the school room Wednesday morning. Replaced our workbox set up with stacked drawers. I love the workbox system, but very few of our books fit in the boxes, most were bending. :( Erin has 12x12 drawers and the younger two have 8 1/2 x 11 drawers. The drawers are numbered just like the boxes were. They have laminated pages on clipboards where they attach their tags after they finish a box.

Wednesday night we kicked off a month long prayer focus at church. It was an awesome service! Lots of time spent in prayer - Loving God, Loving each other and Loving our world!

Thursday - Field trip day! Because of rainy weather we ended up having our field trip classes at our church (they were so kind to let us use the kid's area!). The classes were about "Oceans and You". Our older kids did activities to learn about oil spills. They tried to contain and clean up an "oil spill" using different materials like straws, foil, nylon, hair (yucky!) and droppers. At the end of the class the instructor had the kids do a short activity about trash in the ocean and told them how long it takes for some of these trash items to break down.

While the girls were at small group Thursday night, Dh, Austin and I went by B&N where we found this book for Abigail. Anyone who knows Abigail will understand that there has been a great amount of high pitched squealing going on around here since last night. :)

Friday - a quiet day at home. After finishing their school work, Austin & Abigail decided to trek down to the creek to see how all of the rain we have had affected it. The creek has been bone dry for so many months!

School this week:

Math - Erin is happily plugging away at Geometry with Fred (Life of Fred). We recently bought this book after she got bogged down with TT Geometry and its gazillion proofs. Erin has used all of the LOF books (except the newer pre-algebra), and has really enjoyed Fred's antics. :)

Austin and I have started from scratch in Algebra I. He was not getting it working somewhat independently, so we are starting over with A LOT of one on one time.

Abigail worked on dividing decimals in MUS Zeta this week. I let her test out of the chapter after two practice pages because she was complaining about how easy it was. I am really beginning to think that we need to go ahead and finish this book and move on to Pre-Algebra, because she needs more of a challenge.

Science - Erin tells me every week that her favorite part of Chemistry is the notebook she is making based on studying The Elements by Theodore Gray. She creates one or two notebook pages per week for each element. I found this idea earlier this year on this blog.

The youngers & I are kind of between science studies right now (outside of Nature Study).

Bible/Character study - Erin finished TobyMac's City on our Knees and began reading his book, Under God. She is also reading a biography of William Carey. Austin is currently reading a YWAM biography of Jim Elliot, and Abigail is reading Ten Girls who used their Talents. We also took Wednesday lunchtime to pray through the prayer guide our church provided.

History - sigh...we did not get a lot done in this area this week...we will be starting a study of the Civil War soon...I hope.... Erin and Austin are studying Africa in World Geography.

English - spelling lists, vocabulary studies, reading, writing, vocabulary and spelling games, more reading. The girls have book club Monday night -Erin has finished the book (The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate), Abigail needs to get started on it and I am reading it in the mornings while I walk on the treadmill. While I really like the nature study part of it, I am not sure I like the rest of the story...will hold final thoughts until I finish the book.

I need to get next week planned out today. Dh & I have been in foster care training for the last few Saturdays (6 hours per Saturday!). Our Sundays have been busy as well, leaving me with very little planning/prep work time. I end up feeling like I am already three steps behind on Monday morning. We have two more weeks of class, so I am going to try to get all my prep work done on Friday afternoons.

See more weekly wrap-ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Have a great weekend!