Weekly Wrap-Up ::: July 6, 2012

I’m participating in Kris’ Weekly Wrap-Up this week. This is something that I would like to get into the habit of doing during our school year and I know I’ve made promises (to myself) before about writing weekly summaries of our school work. Maybe this time it will stick. We’ve had a good week here … the first week of our summer break where we haven’t had anything on the calendar and it was LOVELY. : )

(If anyone is visiting from Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the first time, I have four munchkins – N1 (8 1/2), N2 (6 1/2), B (5) – all girls, and the boy (21 mos). Starting this week and through the month of July, we are also keeping my nephew M (7 1/2), and occasionally my niece, J (14), so they may pop up here from time to time).

We are planning to start our summer school schedule next week – it sure seems like our month off in June went by fast! (You can visit this post to see what fun things we filled it with!) I have a few specialized projects that I want to tackle with the girls that don’t fit during the normal school year and we’ll be including cousin M in our school time as well. On our docket for the month of July:

• wrapping up a few loose ends for N1 before she starts 3rd grade this fall. She has a a few math lessons in Saxon 2 to finish up, and we want to work on nailing her math facts before we really dive into multiplication in a few weeks. She also has a few lessons left in both her Writing with Ease (WWE) Level 2 and 1st Language Lessons (1LL) Level 2 that we need to complete as well. My mornings will probably be spent working primarily with her on these things while the others work on…
• handwriting skills! My sister has asked me to work with my nephew on this and we’re going to just practice his writing over the next four weeks. I’ve downloaded Copywork Lessons for Future Heroes and we’re going to work through them. I’m going to go ahead and let my new kindergartener and 1st grader brush up on their handwriting as well. My rising K student is a lefty and tends to write from right to left when she’s working on something so a little head start won’t hurt her one bit. : )
• We are going to do two fun unit study type activities in the afternoon.
  • My Body – I did this with N1 when she was in kindergarten and we loved it. You trace the outline of the child and then each lesson is a couple of paragraphs on the different organs that make up your insides. After reading about each organ, you then color a picture of it and glue it on your body where it goes.
  • Geography studies – I don’t have a set book for this, but I want the girls (and the nephew) to learn some basic geography facts. I’ve purchased A Childs Geography Explore His Earth by Ann Voskamp and we’ll read some out of that, but I also have a several other geography picture books that we’ll use to familiarize ourselves with various terms. Continents and oceans will be covered of course (especially for the little that don’t know those) as well as topics like different landforms (mountains, plateaus, peninsulas) and events that shape our land (volcanos and earthquakes).

I think those activities will keep up plenty busy to give us some structure and still allow time for swimming and whatever summer activities we want to include when it’s not crazy hot outside. I’m just not into playing outside when it’s hitting 100* everyday. Call me crazy, but that’s just not fun to me.

Hope everyone has a good weekend … I’m nursing a case of bronchitis (my first ever so I’m using that as my excuse as to why I waited so long to go to the dr. instead earlier in the week like I should have, a-hem,) and I have one munchkin down with strep. Lots of diet Sprite and couch time for the two of us so we can hit the ground running on Monday.