I'm quite happy to say that we managed not only five days this week, but six! Yeah! We had four days off for illness last week and if my younger boys ever break out in chicken pox, we'll have some more sick days soon. I'm hoping to get a good rhythm established so that we don't get completely off track.
On Monday we headed down to my sister's to spend the day doing school today. I'm enjoying our Fine Arts Co-Op we've been doing. I think the boys are as well.
On Wednesday I finally did something I have never done in our eight years of homeschooling - let the boys create salt dough maps. They loved it of course. As part of our geography studies for Tapestry of Grace there is a large number of geography terms they need to learn. A few weeks ago we went over them and the boys created paper maps. Today I finally let them create a salt dough map. Once they are completely dry we plan to paint them and then label all the land forms. Wednesday we didn't go anywhere outside the house and it was nice to stay in and have lots of time to work on projects like this. While I'm not enjoying all of the snow we're getting or the fact that my two younger boys still haven't broken out in chicken pox, I am loving all of the time we are having at home for a change.
We ended the day playing one of our new favorite games with Daddy during supper - TransAmerica. It's a nice and easy strategy game that also teaches the location of some major US cities. Even J7 is able to play with a little help. Daddy reads J7's cards and points him in the right direction to link up his cities. How he does that is up to him and he's come very close to winning a time or two.
The rest of the week were just getting basics done and working off of checklists. Thursday was rather boring I'm sure, but they did accomplish there work.
Friday I thought I managed to find some neat links for them to use for history thanks to the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History. I keep forgetting I have that book sitting here. It was really fun to go through all the links and see what I could find. The boys seemed to have fun with them as well.
I was a mean homeschooling mom this week and actually made the boys do school on Saturday as well. This did put us that much closer to getting our days in though so I was happy with it even if they weren't! We ended the week on day #82 out of our 175 days required by the state. I am almost positive this is the furtherest along we've ever been at this point in time. I didn't have them too much stuff - just the basics and a couple fun things.
It was a great week and one filled with all kinds of learning - the best kind of week!
Be sure to head over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see other Weekly Wrap-Ups.
Looks like you had a productive week! It's hard sometimes to get back in the swing of things after being off and once in awhile we have to have Saturday school, too :)
ReplyDeleteVisiting from the weekly wrap-up :)
Kattie
Sounds like a great week--and day 82 is exciting! You're nearly to the halfway mark!
ReplyDeleteLooks like a GREAT week, Lisa! (What do you mean by checklists? An assignment list? Always curious how others meet their goals, especially with simple ideas.)
ReplyDeleteJessy
http://oursideofthemtn.blogspot.com
You've been picked for the Stylish Blogger Award. You deserve it!
ReplyDeletehttp://bzoohomeschool.blogspot.com/2011/02/happy-to-receive-stylish-blogger-award.html
Sounds like a lot of fun!
ReplyDeleteI have been looking at Tapestry of Grace. Do you feel it is worth the price?
I'll share my checklist soon, but it's really just that. I write down the subject and under it I write what they are to do each day. I keep them in MSWord so they are easy to edit. Once I put everything on to the school blog, I toss the paper. :-)
ReplyDeleteI haven't yet made a full decision about Tapestry. I do feel it is worth the money as it's intended to be a one-time purchase. If you have multiple children you will be using it with and multiple years, it would be very cost effective. I also really like how they allow you to buy a unit at a time. There is no cost savings for buying them as a bundle if I remember correctly. I also use the library extensively for our books and only plan to buy the ones that are used often.