Week in Review: April 11-17, 2010

Look at her now! She is so proud of herself. She worked really hard and saved her money from her paper route diligently. She has saved enough to pay half on her summer camp, and she even had enough left over to buy this motor scooter. It was rough every month when she would get her paycheck, she wanted it so badly to be able to go to the store and just spend it all. I am so proud of her for sticking with it. Even when the paper route is rough, and the weather isn't perfect, she persevered through, and now she is totally reaping the rewards. She even drove her motor scooter on her paper route this week. Now we need to decide what she will be saving her money for next.

So needless to say she spent every moment outside on it that she could.

The weather was so nice, that all the kids spent their free time outside. E was sharing her scooter and giving everyone a turn, this is one of the things I found T and K doing while waiting. T had set up a type of obstacle course and was teaching K how to do it. It was so cute. I am so proud of the relationships my children have with each other.

The pictures were blurry, because I didn't want to get caught, so I took them through a bedroom window.

K caught many bugs with this cool bug catcher.Together we also made this cool "bird refuge" as part of our spring study. We have a bird house, a bird feeder and even a "makeshift" bird bath. We have already seen mommy and lots of baby birds using it. I set it up so we could watch from a window, and she wouldn't chase after the birds and scare them away. It took the birds a couple days to find it. The first time K saw them out the window she ran to me and said "Mom, this is the best day ever! The birds are there!"

We finished up our lesson about ancient Philistines and Hebrews. We made duck bowls to eat Philistine Stew out of.

We learned how they made olive oil.
We carried water on our heads just like they did in the ancient days.

We ate snacks that they would have had.

We read about lots of bible stories that would have happened about this time too.


We finished our readout loud, The Secret Garden. On Monday we will be having a little theme party.

We studied Botany. We went on a nature walk to find vascular plants, next week we will go to the waterfall by us and look for non-vascular.

I have recently started using writing prompts during our day, and the kids are loving them and I really notice their creative writing and thinking improving vastly over the short period I have been using them. Go here to get April free and be entered to win an entire years worth. If I don't win, I will definitely be buying this.

We also began doing C25K (couch to 5K) Our goal is to run a 5K in May! We are very excited about this.

I taught E how to play racquetball, and I must say she caught on very quickly and is already pretty good at it. She kept saying "I love bonding with my mom, I don't know why other kids think it's not cool, it is so cool!" I want to remember that she said that always!

On top of all this "fun stuff" they also did their regular schoolwork, such as math, reading, etc.

Also I did "attend" The Old Schoolhouse Expo, preview session. I was very nervous about what my kids were going to do for 3 hours, while I was home, and on the computer. So I created a bag, and made a list of activities they could do, put each activity on it's own piece of paper and stuck it in the bag. It had many things, like empty dishwasher, read a book, wash a window, run around the yard 3 times, etc. If they were ever bored, they were to draw from the bag and do what the slip said. I don't think they were ever actually bored, but they loved drawing and doing. So I am going to keep this put away, and only use it when I really need it.
I was able to learn plenty from the expo, plus my admission ticket includes the mp3 downloads of all the sessions.
I adapted this idea from the way we do housework. I put all the jobs that need to be done on slips of paper and put them in a paper bag, and we draw from that and that is the job that you do. We all work until all jobs have been done. The kids all love doing it this way, and then they can't say "no fair".

To find out how others homeschool this week check it out over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.