We've got one last school week all together before the kids head off to California adventures with their grandparents for a week, and it's a bustling one!
MONDAY: Right now, the kids and I are in a study lounge in the basement of the building that I used to teach in at our local university; the older kid is meant to be coloring in the chapter 2 vocabulary flash cards from Song School Spanish
, while the younger kid is meant to be researching the Dartmoor for tomorrow's horseback riding class, but mostly they're getting me to look up how much bounce houses cost (a lot), and speculating where they would keep a bounce house if they bought one (the field at the bottom of the hill behind our house, although the ground might still need to be leveled some), and how much fun they would have with their own bounce house (again, a lot).
Soon, however, we'll wander up to the first floor parking garage of this building, where I'll collect several more little kids, and then we'll all wander over to the campus greenhouse, where we'll take a tour, search for flowers, identify their parts, and generally have a fabulous field trip together.
After our field trip, the kids and I will go immediately over to our weekly volunteer gig; the older kid was able to man the meat counter entirely by herself last week!
In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is finishing up multiplication and moving into a review of telling time; the older kid is finishing up long division and moving briefly to averaging, and then into fractions.
TUESDAY: The kids have their last rehearsal for their horse show during this day's horseback riding lessons. I also found a picture book about the Lippizaner for them to read; I don't remember if they've had this breed to research yet, but it's a great story that highlights what makes a horse breed special.
I'm not looking forward to helping the kids with their Halloween costumes, to be frank, but it's one of those things that a parent must do. The younger kid's costumes, in particular, are generally elaborate and require lots of parental help; for this year's Tinkerbell costume, I believe that I will be required to take her shopping for white yarn and the exact green fabric that she requires, and teach her how to make yarn pom-poms.
The kids will continue to work on the Junior Ranger badges that they chose last week; I do ask them to put the location of the park that they're working from on our big wall map, but I'm fine that the badge books themselves are cross-curricular--there are so many interesting, unexpected things to learn!
I realized that I haven't yet asked the children to memorize our new address, so we'll be doing that, as well as crafting our fire escape plan, under the auspices of the Girl Scout First Aid badges for Brownies and Juniors. We're going on a field trip to the fire station on Thursday, and I know the fire fighters will ask them!
WEDNESDAY: Don't tell the kids, but I am NOT signing them up for an aerial silks class this week. The rest of our calendar week will be VERY busy, and so will their trip to California next week--fun, but busy!--and so I want them to have one last completely free day to rest, recharge, and play.
THURSDAY: We've got our regular homeschool group's afternoon at a local park, and a field trip to the fire station in the morning (there will also be an ambulance there, and EMTs who will discuss first aid, also for the First Aid badges), but I am the most excited, by far, by the partial solar eclipse that clear skies will allow us to witness on this afternoon! And just two weeks after the lunar eclipse--what a treat!
A couple of units of First Language Lessons
will finish off the day. The kids don't really seem to be understanding adverbs, so I'm finally thankful for how slowly this book moves.
FRIDAY: Ten Times Better
has some fun, easy multiplication poems to memorize, and then I'll be going over a few more problems from the AMC 8 with the kids; I don't expect them to ace this upcoming exam, by any means, but studying for it has enabled us to discuss a lot of interesting math concepts, as well as learn that a dot is the same as a multiplication sign, what an ellipses means in math, and how to work a multiple-choice question.
After this day's spelling test, the kids will be writing sentences with their new words, again, as well as playing Spelling City. The sentence-writing turned out to be a GREAT activity last week; I had no idea that the kids would have trouble writing complete sentences! We'll be repeating this activity weekly until that whole subject-verb business is an absolute no-brainer.
The kids had their first ice skating class of the season last week, and once again had a fabulous time. This week, they'll be heading straight from there to a friend's Halloween party; since we'll be missing spending Halloween with the kids (they'll be in California with their grandparents), I'm glad that we've got *some* Halloween festivities to experience with them here before they leave.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Busiest. Weekend. EVER! The younger kid's got ballet class and Nutcracker rehearsal, both kids have the horse show performance that they've been practicing for months for, and the university is hosting its open house for the science departments, AND there's a big end-of-the-year party for 4H that afternoon. We will all sleep well that night!
On Sunday, the older kid only has chess club, but I'm sure there will be tons of frantic shopping and packing and laundering and panicking, because the next day will dawn with us on the way to the airport to send the kids to their grandparents in California.
And yes, I will spend next week weeping/working/partying/missing my babies.
MONDAY: Right now, the kids and I are in a study lounge in the basement of the building that I used to teach in at our local university; the older kid is meant to be coloring in the chapter 2 vocabulary flash cards from Song School Spanish
, while the younger kid is meant to be researching the Dartmoor for tomorrow's horseback riding class, but mostly they're getting me to look up how much bounce houses cost (a lot), and speculating where they would keep a bounce house if they bought one (the field at the bottom of the hill behind our house, although the ground might still need to be leveled some), and how much fun they would have with their own bounce house (again, a lot).Soon, however, we'll wander up to the first floor parking garage of this building, where I'll collect several more little kids, and then we'll all wander over to the campus greenhouse, where we'll take a tour, search for flowers, identify their parts, and generally have a fabulous field trip together.
After our field trip, the kids and I will go immediately over to our weekly volunteer gig; the older kid was able to man the meat counter entirely by herself last week!
In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is finishing up multiplication and moving into a review of telling time; the older kid is finishing up long division and moving briefly to averaging, and then into fractions.
TUESDAY: The kids have their last rehearsal for their horse show during this day's horseback riding lessons. I also found a picture book about the Lippizaner for them to read; I don't remember if they've had this breed to research yet, but it's a great story that highlights what makes a horse breed special.
I'm not looking forward to helping the kids with their Halloween costumes, to be frank, but it's one of those things that a parent must do. The younger kid's costumes, in particular, are generally elaborate and require lots of parental help; for this year's Tinkerbell costume, I believe that I will be required to take her shopping for white yarn and the exact green fabric that she requires, and teach her how to make yarn pom-poms.
The kids will continue to work on the Junior Ranger badges that they chose last week; I do ask them to put the location of the park that they're working from on our big wall map, but I'm fine that the badge books themselves are cross-curricular--there are so many interesting, unexpected things to learn!
I realized that I haven't yet asked the children to memorize our new address, so we'll be doing that, as well as crafting our fire escape plan, under the auspices of the Girl Scout First Aid badges for Brownies and Juniors. We're going on a field trip to the fire station on Thursday, and I know the fire fighters will ask them!
WEDNESDAY: Don't tell the kids, but I am NOT signing them up for an aerial silks class this week. The rest of our calendar week will be VERY busy, and so will their trip to California next week--fun, but busy!--and so I want them to have one last completely free day to rest, recharge, and play.
THURSDAY: We've got our regular homeschool group's afternoon at a local park, and a field trip to the fire station in the morning (there will also be an ambulance there, and EMTs who will discuss first aid, also for the First Aid badges), but I am the most excited, by far, by the partial solar eclipse that clear skies will allow us to witness on this afternoon! And just two weeks after the lunar eclipse--what a treat!
A couple of units of First Language Lessons
will finish off the day. The kids don't really seem to be understanding adverbs, so I'm finally thankful for how slowly this book moves.FRIDAY: Ten Times Better
has some fun, easy multiplication poems to memorize, and then I'll be going over a few more problems from the AMC 8 with the kids; I don't expect them to ace this upcoming exam, by any means, but studying for it has enabled us to discuss a lot of interesting math concepts, as well as learn that a dot is the same as a multiplication sign, what an ellipses means in math, and how to work a multiple-choice question.After this day's spelling test, the kids will be writing sentences with their new words, again, as well as playing Spelling City. The sentence-writing turned out to be a GREAT activity last week; I had no idea that the kids would have trouble writing complete sentences! We'll be repeating this activity weekly until that whole subject-verb business is an absolute no-brainer.
The kids had their first ice skating class of the season last week, and once again had a fabulous time. This week, they'll be heading straight from there to a friend's Halloween party; since we'll be missing spending Halloween with the kids (they'll be in California with their grandparents), I'm glad that we've got *some* Halloween festivities to experience with them here before they leave.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Busiest. Weekend. EVER! The younger kid's got ballet class and Nutcracker rehearsal, both kids have the horse show performance that they've been practicing for months for, and the university is hosting its open house for the science departments, AND there's a big end-of-the-year party for 4H that afternoon. We will all sleep well that night!
On Sunday, the older kid only has chess club, but I'm sure there will be tons of frantic shopping and packing and laundering and panicking, because the next day will dawn with us on the way to the airport to send the kids to their grandparents in California.
And yes, I will spend next week weeping/working/partying/missing my babies.
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
3 comments:
Looks like things are going great for you guys. Happy to see you are using VocabularySpellingCity.com. I saw where you mentioned making flashcards. Our premium members can make flashcards for any word list.
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Joyfully,
Jackie
VocabularySpellingCity
Are the girls flying out on their own?
We get another Gramma visit, she arrives on Thursday. Now that she knows how much fun and how cheap the train is, I expect we will get to see her a lot more often :0)
That and now we have room for her...
We started school up again yesterday. For now we are just going to focus on Math Mammoth, Story of the World, and writing using various materials.
A few weeks ago I realized that between 3pm and 5pm, Emma will sit down on her own with some sort of school work (usually homework from the co-op). Made me realize that she is an afternoon learner. So yesterday, I spent the morning working on my stuff, then after lunch and a walk, we got started with hers. It went pretty well.
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