--although the fact that we took a spontaneous day off to hike with some new friends necessarily meant that we didn't try to accomplish everything on last week's work plans. What didn't get done last week, however, will have to be put on hold until the middle of October, because this is our last week of school until after our vacation, and we are spending it focusing on Hawaii and World War 2!
Well, and the unusual plethora of outside activities that we have this week, including THREE Girl Scout events, two library workshops, and a playdate on top of our regular volunteer work, playgroup, and classes.
Books of the Day this week are all things World War 2 and Hawaii. Memory work for the week consists of the vocabulary from the weekend's Mandarin class (I was correct that the second go-round of the class is really helping the material click for the kids; Syd, in particular, is feeling much more confident), chapter 2 of Wordly Wise (Syd is in book 4 and Will is in book 6), a page of cursive each day (Syd uses the secular version of New American Cursive book 2, and Will uses Teach Yourself Cursive, although she's got some extra copywork on cursive capital D today, after she made an utter hash of it on Friday), and since I want Will to review fractions terminology this week, I'm asking Syd to practice her newer ballet moves, just so nobody can declare that their work is unevenly distributed.
In addition to the kids' daily chores, I am also requiring each kid to have $50 of her own spending money to take to Hawaii. Syd has twice that but won't spend it, and Will generally earns only enough money each week to buy herself a ring pop or cotton candy at the drive-in, so I think they'll both be working from the list of "Hawaii chores" that I've made for them. I'm requiring them to earn 1/8 of this total each day, as well as complete their schoolwork and regular chores, to unlock their hour of screen time.
And here's the rest of our week!
MONDAY: We've got our weekly volunteer gig later, but we should have time to both begin Wordly Wise and finish today's Math Mammoth (Syd is still in multi-digit multiplication this week, and Will is still in fractions) before we go.
Good thing, too, because this afternoon is all about party prep! I wanted to finish off our brief unit on Christopher Columbus with fanfare, so we're having a family Columbus party tonight. The kids are I are going to make baked potato boats (basically a baked potato cut in half with a chopstick mast stuck in), a Jello ocean with gummy fish swimming in it and orange slice boats sailing on it, a carved watermelon boat, and a batch of brownies cut and formed into a boat... somehow. There will also be games, which I'm imagining will be mostly along the lines of tying ropes to Rubbermaid bins and pulling each other along in them. And I'm contemplating a family driveway art project of the Atlantic Ocean and its bordering continents that our cardboard Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria can sail across, but we'll see if we're uninjured enough after our Rubbermaid bin races to deal with that.
TUESDAY: Do NOT let me forget to go to the hardware store for a diamond Dremel bit tonight, because tomorrow, after reading about petroglyphs, we're going to carve some!
I'm looking forward to playgroup as my chance to chat with other adults while the kids run around, and we'll likely head to the library afterwards to read and do math until it's time to drop Syd off for her Girl Scout workshop making friendship bracelets.
WEDNESDAY: This morning will see us right back at the library for a homeschool workshop on programming, and I'm contemplating just staying downtown all day until Syd's ballet class that evening. We like the audiobook version of Story of the World, though, so we'll have to find someplace where we can listen to chapter 28 so that the kids can answer the quiz questions (I make them into tri-fold brochures for them, and then after they answer the questions they fold up the brochure and decorate the front). Chapter 28 only mentions Pearl Harbor briefly, but it's necessary context for our trip there.
THURSDAY: The mapwork for chapter 28 provides more useful context, so we'll work through that and Math Mammoth before we head off to our Girl Scout meeting! Will has horseback riding afterwards, and Syd and I have a couple of projects that we need to finish up--the curtain that she wants in front of her bunk bed, and the decorated front door of her doll house.
FRIDAY: Syd has a friend coming over to play on this morning, which means that neither kid will likely get this schoolwork finished. However, I would like them to research at least one more Hawaiian plant or animal that we can look for on our trip, and I would like them to have a little more knowledge of Japanese war planes, in preparation for the trip the the Pacific Aviation Museum that we're going to take in Oahu.
Will, in particular, is going to be a busy girl, with both a library workshop and a Girl Scout event on this day. With her occupied, however, Syd and I should be able to finish up our own projects before the weekend!
As for me, I need to get all of my writing assignments written and all of our vacation plans made, make sure I'm on-track with a couple of longer-term assignments, and finally finish up registrations for my Girl Scout troop, while apparently playing kid-chauffeur all over freaking town.
I have often noted that, good thing, writing can be written anywhere! And so can Girl Scout paperwork... yay.
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