Weekly Wrap-up ::: July 2–6 // The Week That Didn’t Go Like I Thought…

Our first week of our summer schooling is under our belt! We had a few good days and one pretty rough day – overall, not too bad a start at something that I’d never tried before, I suppose. : )

I posted our plans here for last week. In a nutshell, I wanted to help N1 wrap up a few things we didn’t finish last year and get a little more confident in doing math drills. I’m happy to report that we got three decent math lessons plus some drilling practice under our belt and I feel good about what she has remembered in our six week (or so) break. We also tackled a week in our Writing with Ease (completed) and three lessons in First Language Lessons. She and I are working on memorizing prepositions together so if you hear me walking around muttering, “aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among”, etc. … now you know. : )

One of the highlights of our week was starting our body study. On Monday, we traced ourselves.



When I did this with N1 during her kindergarten year, I used presentation board (similar to this but I just bought mine at Walmart). I loved it because it was nice and stiff AND we could fold it up and put it away when we weren’t working on it. A huge plus when we lived in our old house and the school room doubled as the dining room. However, since we have a designated school room now, I decided to buy a roll of butcher paper which is going to come in handy for so many projects. A tip that a friend gave me – buy your roll at Sam’s in the restaurant supply aisle and not the teacher supply store. Much cheaper!

Now one of our school room walls looks like this:



(The wall is normally a giant distracting wall of mirrors so I’m almost enjoying it being covered up). : )

This week we read about the brain (what you see glued in the head area on each one above), the heart, the kidneys and the bladder.


N2 was thoroughly enjoying being a little teacher for B and helping her with her worksheet.




As far as some of the frustrating moments of this week … adding in two extra kids that aren’t really doing school with us has proved to be a bit more challenging that it looked on paper when I was planning it all out. (Insert a “duh” moment here). I’m not throwing in the towel just yet, but I’m doing some thinking and may try a few different things this next week. Another factor that totally slipped by me has to do with my kindergartener. B, who turned 5 in May, is such a young K student compared to when I started with the other girls. FYI, N1 turned six about two months after she started K, and N2 was 5y, 7mos. when she started. I now know need to go much slower than I was planning with her instead of diving into all her K stuff with a bang. For my child that is a firecracker most of the time, slow and gentle is how she needs to be approached about schooling. She never fails to surprise me, that one. : )

And this little dude. Let’s just say we are working on some creative containment ideas with him! His vocabulary is exploding now, but that needs to be a whole post on it’s own one of these days. It’s been a while since I’ve done a milestone-type post on him so maybe next week. He’s such a yummy distraction to our school days. : )



Linking up with Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Read-Aloud Thursday ::: A Teaser Post

I really, really wanted to have our current read-aloud finished for this week’s Read-Aloud Thursday, but we’re about two days away from finishing our latest afternoon chapter book. In lieu of a finished review, a few teaser photos to whet your appetite.

 

For more reviews of books that folks have actually finished, visit Amy at Hope is the Word!

Productive Afternoon

Unless I find something I’ve missed, I think I’ve got all our vacation pictures printed and in my Project Life album and it’s ready for journaling. Whew! I’m also at a breaking point in my album. I need to start a volume 2 for our 2012 PL album – the first album is seriously maxed out! I think this is going to be the final page in volume 1:

And I think this is going to be the beginning page for volume 2:

Volume 2 will actually start with the the last week of June and our week of vacation and hopefully I can share some of those pages before the end of this week. I had an hour this afternoon while the girls had a neighbor over to play with and I took full advantage. : )
And now, it’s time to put my photos and albums away and make dinner. : ) Happy Tuesday!

A Project Life Catch-up Post // Week 24, June 17-23

The facts.

This is what the inside of the last six weeks of my Project Life album looks like.



June was sooooo busy. I gave myself permission to set PL aside for a few weeks so I could just manage the immediate and now I’m back to play catch up. The only thing I have done the last six weeks is print photos. Usually on Sunday afternoon, when the boy takes a long nap, I would get on the computer and quickly (and hopefully painlessly) pick pictures from last week and slip them in the album. Now, I’m going back and adding in the journaling as well as working on printing the pictures from vacation last week and getting those in the album. It feels good to be playing with my PL supplies again! : )

Anyway, this is one of the more recent weeks that I needed to catch up on – June 17-23, and probably our craziest week of the month. T was out of town for three days on a business trip, the kids and I attending a 3-day Classical Conversations (CC) practicum, AND it was VBS week at our church (in the evenings). Madness, I say.

The overview. I have four 8 1/2 x 11 inserts in here to hold extra papers that I didn’t want to cut out. (And I didn’t want to spend the extra time scanning or photographing to reduce to include so I took the easy way out.



On the left:

• After we got T off to the airport, I took the little people and went a grabbed a few groceries and then to the pool in hopes of wearing them down before bed. My first trip with the four of them by myself and we all survived.
• Day of our CC practicum. My brain might have exploded during the discussions about Latin.
• Another photo from the CC practicum – this one from the tutoring training that I attending in the afternoon.
• No extra photos in my journaling spots. I used all four spaces to talk about CC (and I could / should have used a fold-over card, but didn’t) to cover some of the highlights of our days there.

Up close on some of the journaling…


Just plopped a couple Instagram pics on a piece of digi background paper.



The first 8 1/2 x 11 insert are the Father’s Day cards that the girls made T. I totally dropped the ball on Father’s Day this year. Not my finest moment!



Second insert. This is a map of Africa that N1 drew during the Classical Conversations camp that she attended. The paper is very wrinkled because she wanted it to have an old look. : )



On the back of her map are some little progress reports that the kids’ camp teachers gave them. I included one from the boy’s class because I loved how it said he was happy and busy. Yes, that’s him! On the right is insert number 3 with N2’s map that she traced.



More of N2’s work – learning how to draw blob maps of the world to get the general idea of continent placement. On the right is insert number four which is totally random. In cleaning out some papers I found this old reading log I kept from 2006. I don’t even remember reading some of these books, so I stuck it in there for fun.



On the right of the main PL layout:

• a photo from the camp presentations on the last day of their CC camp.
• a photo from Target. Our Target is now a SUPERTarget. It remains to be seen as to whether is is a big timesaving thing for me or a way to spend more money. : )
• One of the girls’ “passports” from the week at VBS. I didn’t take a single VBS picture this week.
• Girls’ Night Out dinner on Saturday. So fun to catch up with a friend that was in from out-of-town.

Up close.



One week caught up, five more to go! I’m hoping, now that July is here and we are done with most of our coming and going for this season, that I can get caught up and stay current for a bit. We are actually going to start a little school next week – these 100+ days are so long when you can’t burn off some energy outside.
Have a great Saturday. : )

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.

This photo makes me happy…

The oldest, with one of my Nancy Drew books and yesterday’s 4th of July tattoo still on her cheek.

Hope you had a great 4th of July! We did a lot of work around the house and capped the day with a cookout and lots of water play (for the kids) with neighbors. Today is back to the regular grind with a run to the library and for milk and diapers (necessities!) I’m hoping to get some time for my Project Life album today as well … we’ll see if I can squeeze some time in to catch up!

Happy Thursday. : )

Goodbye June

There was swimming.

 

Ballet camp.

Three days of learning and getting inspired.

 

First Star Wars t-shirt. Heeee. : )

Swinging.

 

Tooth losing.

Not near enough of this.

 

A lot of birthday celebrating!

Hers (above) and his. : )

Pioneer Woman spicy Dr. Pepper shredded pork and pineapple salsa. Highly recommend. But not necessarily together.

Vacation and family, but that will be it’s own post one of these days. : )

Reading Plans :: May AND June Wrap-Up and What’s Coming in July

I’m playing catch-up here with two reading plan posts wrapping into one due to my June blogging break! (It was fun, and needed, and hopefully I can squeeze in a few minutes here for catching up now and again.) I had blogged my May goals, but never reported back on them so this will include May and June and some plans for July. I have missed blogging my reading goals! And wouldn’t you know it … without blogging it, I didn’t make a list for June OR get much read.

My goals and predictions for May were as follows:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, the May selection for the Reading to Know bookclub. Read, but never blogged. Shame on me. I did enjoy revisiting this story that I had loved as a child, and found that I had forgotten most of it!
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, and it seems appropriate now that summer produce season is in full swing (or about to be.) : ) Forgot about this one…
• Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis. Read and LOVED.

I also managed to read:

• Gregor the Overlander and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins
• Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen by Cynthia Ryland, read-aloud with N2
• Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods
• Gregor and the Marks of Secret
• The Cricket in Times Square by George Seldon, read aloud with the girls and blogged here
• Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss, a re-read
• Meet the Austins by Madeline L’Engle, another re-read
• The Moon by Night by Madeline L’Engle, Austin Family Chronicles book 2, another re-read
• An Acceptable Time by Madeline L’Engle. This is a story that involves Polly, daughter of Meg Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time. A new read for me and I really enjoyed it! : )

Sorry for the lack o’ links … trying to finish this post between laundry loads and during rest time. : )

A lot of fun, lighter reading in May as well as revisiting some favorites. That’s what happens when my brain is overloaded!

June reading was been a total bust for me for the first three weeks. A lot of running around this month between ballet camp for little girls, a Classical Conversations three-day training/practicum, VBS, and other assorted summery activities. My goals were to try and tackle:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (again)
• more Madeline L’Engle – we hit a local used bookstore recently and I bought almost the entire Wrinkle in Time series, as well as more Austin Family Chronicle books.
• the sequel to The Fiddler's Gun, Fiddler's Green (Fin's Revolution) , by A.S. Peterson

As of today, I managed to read:

• Gregor and the Code of Claw (the last book in the Gregor the Overlander series)
• Helper by Design: God's Perfect Plan for Women in Marriage by Elyse Fitzpatrick. I needed this marital kick in the pants. : ) Good reminders for me as we are reaching the 10 year mark in our marriage this summer and I enjoyed this book much better than I did Give Them Grace. It has made me consider going back and giving her parenting book (and writing style) a second shot.

…and that’s it. Nothing else was really finished, much less attempted. June was just that busy. Thank goodness I didn’t wait until June to read The Girl of the Limberlost! I hosted the Reading to Know blogclub in June and enjoyed sharing a few beginning thoughts here and the wrap-up here on Carrie’s blog. (Thanks again, Carrie, for inviting me to host!)

Moving forward. : )

I’m hoping to rebound on my reading plans for July. : ) My goals are:

• to participate in Carrie’s Narnia reading challenge this month. I’m planning on reading one of the Narnia books out loud to the girls. I had to go back and look at old blog post, but apparently we started The Magician's Nephew last summer, but didn’t finish it. Must rectify this. (This is also the book selection/theme for July in the Reading to Know bookclub, fyi).
• I’m considering picking up The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, and reading it for myself. We shall see.
• I started Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I on our way home from vacation on Saturday and have been dying for a pocket of time to get back to it. The cover artwork on this book drew me in when I spotted it at the library (and I think I remember a mention of this title on Melissa Wiley’s blog months ago.)
• I’ve also been slowly reading through The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had (top photo) and want to keep plugging away at it. I’m getting inspired to read all sorts of classics.

This is all I’m going to commit to at this point. Of course, there is a STACK of books on my nightstand, in baskets, and piled on my desk that are calling my name as well, but I’m not listing any more for now. We shall see where we end up in a month!

Happy reading!

Past 2012 Monthly Reading Goals:
January
February
March
April
May