Work Plans for the Week of October 14

It's a week busy with non-school stuff, and so a more boring, but nevertheless productive, school week:


MONDAY: Nothing too new in memory work this week--the girls are on H/I in cursive, spelling will continue through our homeschool group's Spelling Bee (after which I might drop it for a few months, since we're pushing it so hard now), they've just begun to memorize the multiplication tables, and last week's Drawing with Children work was so frustrating for Will that we're going to keep doing that same work this week instead of moving on with the next lesson. But we're starting back up with the Song School Latin book this week, at least, with a review of the previous chapters that we've studied--next week we get a new chapter!

I've got a lot of useful, fun hands-on math activities planned, but this week is SO hectic that I'm not doing them; instead, the kiddos are just going to plug away at their Math Mammoth, a work that they can do here at home, or at the library (where we'll be at least three times this week), or at the doctor's office (once), or at the dentist (once). Well, instead of Math Mammoth on Monday, Syd's got a cute clock book to put together--maximizing those early reading skills, doncha know?--but other than that, it's away they plug! At least they'll be plugging away when they're not at a public library nature craft program or our weekly volunteer gig, both of which we'll also be doing on Monday.

TUESDAY: Not only do we have a hectic week planned, but Matt was gone for about half a week at some sort of conference for graphic designers at university alumni magazines (Hunh, that sounds totally fake now that I'm writing it down...), so we've been a little off kilter and stressed for a few days now, and to alleviate that the girls and I have done a TON of craft projects! Seriously, we've rolled beeswax candles, and cut Halloween decorations out of kite paper, and painted glass jar luminaries, and decoupaged tissue paper squares onto more glass jars, and colored, and sketched onto scratch paper, and that's just like a day and a half worth of projects. So for one of our Tuesday schoolworks, I'm going to hand off to the girls a cool book that I was given to review, half journal and half paper crafts book, to see if anything strikes their fancy. Actually, Will might learn a magic trick instead of working with this book, since she asked me if she could do magic for school this week but I forgot to put it on the schedule, so just consider this spot the place for some hands-on extra-curricular activity.

Science is staying on track, however. We're finally ready to start human biology, and we're beginning with our traditional starting point--a sketch and an order of classification.

WEDNESDAY: I've planned for the girls to spend most of the day with a friend, mostly to score some free babysitting so I can get to the dentist for a cleaning and check-up, so it's just math, memory work, a couple of fun things, and aerial silks for Will.

THURSDAY: Thursday seems to be the day we've settled on as good for our ongoing projects--Will's History of Video Games unit study, Syd's cookbook project, etc. The girls just spent the past several Saturdays at a fabulous science program run by the IU School of Education, and I'd like to incorporate some more enrichment in the subjects that they studied into our week. Will's class studied light and sound, which is why we've been playing with pinhole cameras and doing 3D drawings; hopefully next week I'll also be able to incorporate some activities from Syd's classroom studies of the earth and sky.

That will have to be the morning's work, however; Thursday afternoons belong to our homeschool group's park playgroup, and Thursday evening is the long-anticipated, much prepared for Biography Fair. I'm sure the girls' presentations on Jules Verne and Harry Potter will be just masterful.

FRIDAY: The girls have some correspondence to catch up on, which is always good for practicing their handwriting and composition skills, and they've also got some scrapbooking to do, this time of our trip to The Crayola Experience in Easton, Pennsylvania. We'll listen again to the audio chapters that we've covered in Story of the World, and go over the quiz questions again, hopefully to start a new chapter next week.

Will caught a peek at my Halloween Pinterest board, and is VERY interested in making the candy corn cake that she saw there, so we'll set aside some time on Friday to make a few different Halloween-themed treats, all measured and mixed and baked by the girls. Nothing like baked goods as a bribe to master fractions!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I am going to REST next weekend, after working my butt off without Matt around THIS weekend! I am definitely sending him and the girls to Read to a Dog and chess club without me, and at this rate, I may send them to the apple orchard without me as well. They can spend the day there and take pictures and play on the hay bales and bring me my bushel of apples and the kids' Jack-o-lanterns and the pie pumpkins without me, and I just may stay in the bath all day, a hard cider in one hand and a Doctor Who novel in the other.