Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week-ish, we...

swam and swam and had swim class, rode pedal bikes and balance bikes and scooters, picked blueberries--

--picked blackberries, went to a carnival, learned how to slip 'n slide, hiked some nature trails and hiked downtown, scrubbed the basement steps something fierce (the giant timeline preparations are in motion!) and wrestled and raced and goofed around a lot.

did workbook pages and many puzzles, played more of that inane Dragon Tales computer game, played pick-up sticks and dice (Willow made up a dice game that is a KILLER for anybody else but her to win), used little plastic toy bugs as math manipulatives for addition, subtraction, and pattern-making, and stamped with number stamps.

read, read, READ--Willow read Abigail's Drum, several Dinosaur Cove books, a mystery that takes place at Niagara Falls, and a Boxcar Children book that I was supposed to be reading TO her but it was so dull that I kept dozing off, oops; together we read many picture books, including the beautiful Blueberries for Sal, and began Fantastic Mr. Fox. We also watched the film of Fantastic Mr. Fox, spent entire afternoons at the library more than once, and did some workbook and played some Starfall.

made more sand art--

--decorated toilet paper tubes in preparation for the Great Refrigerator Marble Run, made some collages, worked with Sharpies, tried out a very odd Hello Kitty plastic toy-making oven--

--colored in coloring books and colored plenty free-form, painted loads of watercolor paintings--

--learned from cake how to make plastic bottle votives, and made princess jewels, pirate jewels, and labels for my baby bags together using the Cricut:

practiced guitar and took guitar class, listened to plenty of CDs and vinyl record albums, and goofed around amply with the keyboard, recorder, and other miscellaneous musical instruments.

wrote workbook stuff, kept the girls' library reading program lists all up-to-date and orderly, Willow took a journaling class and made her own journal to write in, and both the girls cracked this week's secret code, also at the library.

watched a documentary on Plimoth Plantation (we leave next week!), played My First Amazing History Explorer over and over and over again on the computer, and read lots and lots and LOTS of books about Pilgrims and First Thanksgivings and the Boston Tea Party, etc.

practiced the ASL alphabet some more, again courtesy of Starfall.

made butter in a Mason jar, and also blueberry muffins and cookies--

--which tasted delicious; watched Mythbusters and Dinosaur Train and a documentary on tornadoes; gardened rather helpfully; worked several works in the official Squire Boone Caverns activity books; and took excellent, loving care of the sweet little baby tadpoles.

And that's how we homeschooled this week--whew!