Work Plans for the Week of July 5, 2016: Shark Week and the Rest of California

We had a super-short school week last week, since we spent most of it camping with friends. Our campsite was right on the lake, with a sandy beach nearby--



--and yet most of my pictures show my own personal favorite spot: around the fire--

--with the food! 

This a walking taco. Basically, it's a mini bag of Fritos with ground beef, shredded cheese, and greens stuffed in. Fold the top of the bag closed, shake it up, then spoon it out with a fork. It's proper gourmet food, I promise you.

I asked this kid to roast a marshmallow for me one night, and asked her not to burn it to a crisp, and you'd have thought that I'd asked her to roll a boulder uphill. "Ugh, MOM! It's taking SO MUCH TIME to not burn it!!!"

We've got a short week this week, as well, and yet there's a little more schoolwork that I deeply desire to get completed before we all wander off on our respective vacations for a couple of weeks, so I'm insisting on a three-day school week, with maybe even one more day snuck in next week.

Books of the Day are, of COURSE, everything California and Alaska, with a little bit of Lincoln and the French and Indian War thrown in for good measure. Our Open-Ended Material of the Week is the Snap Circuits. The kids will also work on their Wordly Wise daily, as well as an online sharks class from Cornell that we're taking as a family. It's a wonderful class, and we'll likely continue with more shark study on our own after it's completed, possibly even with some dissection. Instead of cursive practice, I'm giving the kids their travel journals early so that they can get used to writing in them daily--in cursive, of course!

And here's the rest of our week!



TUESDAY: This week in Math Mammoth, Syd is finishing her unit on fractions, and Will is finishing her unit on decimals; they each will have just the reviews to complete next week before their vacation. Syd could have used more hands-on enrichment in fractions than I gave her in this unit, as I'm not quite sure that she's gaining a complete conceptual understanding along with her ability to calculate with fractions, but Will has another fractions unit coming up after number theory, so I can take that time to do lots of hands-on fraction activities with both kids.

There are just a few more California things that I want the kids to do before their vacation, mostly having to do with working on Junior Ranger books ahead of time so that their grandparents aren't spending half the day sitting on a park bench waiting for a kid to complete a word search, etc. On this day, then, the kids will be completing everything that they can of the Marin Headlands Junior Ranger book. I have more that I want to do with them on the subject of earthquakes, which is one of the interesting things that you can explore at Marin Headlands, but for now, it'll suffice to have them play this online game on subduction and construction that I think will help them visualize the geology of the San Francisco Bay area when they're there.

In the afternoon, the kids and I will head over to our regular Tuesday playgroup with friends, and in the evening, Will and I have fencing!

WEDNESDAY: I also want to finish our study of the French and Indian War before we leave for vacation, so that we can start fresh with our build-up to the Revolutionary War when we return. To that end, we're hitting it pretty hard this week. On this day, we'll be listening to the remaining chapters on the French and Indian War from History of US, then the kids will be completing several of these lapbook activities and putting them into their American Revolution notebooks.

For our California study on this day, the kids will be completing what they can of the Muir Woods Junior Ranger book. I would have liked to have studied John Muir more deeply with the kids, but at least they've read a couple of books about him for Books of the Day. We'll delve more deeply into his life another time, for sure!

THURSDAY: Nature Detectives is an online game associated with Muir Woods. I think the kids will enjoy it, especially Will, as she really loves redwoods. Remind me on another day to tell you about the redwood that she's attempting to grow in our backyard.

Now that we've finished the more detailed telling of the French and Indian War from History of Us, we can review it and contextualize it using Story of the World. The review questions and mapwork aid memorization, and the kids can also put them in their American Revolution notebooks.

FRIDAY: The kids and I have a half-day volunteer orientation on this day, and then we'll be official volunteers of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis! Watch out, all you fossils, because we're going to clean and prepare you!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We'll be celebrating Will's twelfth birthday early on this weekend, with books and daggers and ice cream cake and a French and Indian War LARP game of my own invention, entitled Sucker in the Woods. Y'all, I think it's going to be even more fun than the Midnight Escape from Alcatraz game that I invented a couple of months ago!

And that's our learning for the week! What are YOU learning this week?