Weekly Wrap Up 10/4 to 10/8

What we are reading ~

Me ~ Weapons of Mass Instruction

La ~ Percy Jackson Series- The Lightening Thief & Finished Brewster's Courage

Chris ~ The Creature from Jekyll Island

Morning Read Aloud ~ The Horse  & His Boy

Evening Read Aloud ~ Gulliver's Travels

Around the House ~ 

This week I made my grandmother's sticky buns! Making these made me miss her. She passed away about a year and a half ago. before that she suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for many years. I do wish I had asked her to show me how to make these when I could have!

Out & About Learning ~

We had homes school class at the South Summit Aquatic & Fitness center as usual. I don't think I have been including that in my wrap-ups. It was Playground Games this week. Always a very fun & social time!

Friday we went to the Bug Brigade at the Utah Museum pf Natural History. Out study of microorganisms has led to an interest in bugs. So off we went! La held a few bugs & had a confrontation with a praying mantis. 

Study Time ~

We decided to not make a lot of plans this week and let study time flow. We still accomplished so much! 

• La made a Lunch Menu with prices & we used it at lunch time to practice counting money, making change, etc...
• La planned her project for India to be done at the next Firefly Corps meeting.
• Continued with Latin & Spelling
• Learned about the Tower of Hanoi puzzle & played it. Tough logic puzzle!
• La got curious about where yeast comes from & what it is. No doubt due to my recent fascination with baking. We looked it up which lead to thre days of learning about microorganisms.
• We watched videos about amoebas & cell division. La made a model of a cell out out of Ziploc bag, water, a marble (nucleus), pencil cushion (contractile vacuole) & an eraser (food vacuole). 
• sketched some insects. Do you know what makes an arachnid different from other insects? We do!

Afternoons ~ 

We either continued studies or La played outside. She has been catching newts. They look like small black & green salamanders & we have lots of them. La & the neighbor kids love them!

Next week we have Firefly Corps Meeting on Tuesday. Should be fun!

Summer Starts with a Bang!

In the last 5 weeks I have been out of town for 2 1/2 weeks and have had family visiting for 1 1/2 weeks. Needless to say it has been crazy & fun, or should I say crazy fun! La is really exhausted. I cannot wake her up before 9am lately. I put her to bed by 9pm but she just can't fall asleep and then she sleeps late. Next week is VBS & she must be there by 9am. I am hoping that will get us back on a schedule. 


Here are some highlights from our trips & visits.
I already posted about our AZ trip here.


Chris's Mom, Dad and our niece Isabel came to visit. We went to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons & Fossil Butte with a few rabbit trails thrown in.

We stayed in Jackson, WY

La & Bella Watching Old Faithful

 

Grand Prismatic Spring

Yellowstone Falls

We Saw Lots of Bison - Close Up!

Mammoth Hot Springs (above & below)

The girls earned 3 Jr. Ranger Badges on our Trip!

 A Pilgrimage to Napoleon Dynamite's Town

Preston, ID

Took a chairlift ride at Park City Mt. Resort

Also went on the Alpine slide & Roller Coaster

The Girls Made a Clubhouse Area on the Side of the House

We went to This Is The Place Heritage Park & did many Pioneer Activities. The girls like Pioneer School so much they did it twice!

Well that is a summary of our trip. I also went to the Utah Home Educators Conference this past Saturday. Right now, I have a ton of projects going on...

Making a trip DVD, Planning a Homeschool Info Night, helping with VBS & garage sale at our church, and lots of household projects like cleaning out La's drawers & closet, getting a summer schedule going, revamping my Inspiration List, planning & organizing for next year's Firefly Corps. I will be writing more on these later. Time to get to my To Do List! :-)

The Last Few Weeks

My poor neglected blog! It has been so long since I have written! I made a promise to myself to write something at east once a week. It's not that I think anyone is waiting for my posts with baited breath or anything like that. It's just that I want the practice in writing for myself and I want a record of life to look back on.

Here is a summary of the last few weeks.

Our History Club finished up our American History Study with the American Girls. We made a a movie about  Lewis & Clark. Then we had a Showcase Night for the girls to show off all their hard work and preview the movie.

Above is Part 1 of the movie

Below is Part 2

Here are some pictures from Showcase Night

 Our Time Line & other projects

 

The girls enjoying the potluck

In the middle of all this I spent 2 weeks in AZ with my awesome Grandma & the rest of my family there. We went to Biosphere 2, visited with my friend & her new baby boy, and made some great memories.

Grandma & La made dog biscuits together

 

Grandma also taught La how to play Amazing grace on the Ukulele!

Since we have been back from AZ we've been getting ready for a visit from my husband's parents & our niece. They arrive tonight & we are heading off to Yellowstone tomorrow. I have never seen La so excited about the trip. She has been reading all she can about the park and making herself a research guide. Ah, the art of inspiring. It's so wonderful to see your child take off in these inspired interests, but I don't make a big deal about it in front of her. Inside I am screaming "YES! It's working!". If I show too much enthusiasm about what she is doing it usually drowns her spark. I think it's because that kind of enthusiasm on my part borders on manipulation (if I show her I approve, she'll do more). At least I think that's her interpretation.

Bedschool ~ La working on her own Yellowstone Research Guide & Journal

Those are the major events of our lives since my last post. I will be posting about Yellowstone & our visit with Nonna & Poppa soon.

Value of "Interruptions"

Nonna & La

March is turning out to be a crazy month. We had a wonderful visit from Chris's mother and sister this weekend. It was a huge surprise for both Chris and La. They left yesterday, so today I am looking at our week and month ahead getting reorganized. This month we have 2 more visitors. My niece is coming on Friday for a week. Cousins are coming to visit the last weekend of this month. I am so glad for all these visitors, yet when I look over our schedule I am left wondering when we will get in our study time. It seems that as soon as we settle in on a schedule and get rolling with some wonderfully inspired learning, we are interrupted. This stresses me a little, thinking that we are not getting in "enough" studying. Then I remind myself ~ one of my main reasons for homeschooling ~ The opportunity for our family to live life together. To not be separated and going in 3 different directions at once. So I decided to get down what value these types of "interruptions" have in getting a great education.

• We practice and learn the art of hospitality. This involves putting another person's needs before your own.

"Use hospitality one to another without grudging." 1Peter 4:9

• We learn to be flexible in our schedule and adjust to changes without an inappropriate attitude.
• Family bonds are strengthened through tradition and time spent together. Our immediate family is in 3 different states so these visits our precious time to us.
• When we have visitors we tend to get out there and explore our community and state more than we would if left to ourselves.
• We create memories that enrich our lives.
• Many of these visits involve excursions to "educational" places such as museums or National Parks.
• Real life opportunities are created for reading (menus, maps, park guides), math (comparing new experiences to past experiences, splitting a restaurant bill, adding enough place settings to the dinner table), writing (journal writing, blogging), science (observing nature & weather), history (museums, parks, monuments), social (interacting with the community, family relationships).

I have come to the conclusion that these "interruptions" are what home educating is all about. Living your life as a family, learning and loving along the way. So, who wants to come visit us in April?