Work Plans for the Week of September 19: A Revolution, A Field Trip, and Shark Innards

Last week's school week started strong but petered out before the end (mostly thanks to the fact that we added a new item to our list of broken stuff around our house: now it's the oven, washing machine, dryer, my camera AND MY COMPUTER!!!!1!!!!), so I had to move a couple of Friday's activities to today, alas. Fortunately, none of them were from the units that we're busting our butts to finish before our vacation, so it's no biggie.

We did get most of our schoolwork done, though, mixing up a full day at the art museum and outings with friends and the making of treats and lots of play time and reading time with awesome stuff like shark dissection--

--which we're going to be doing more of this week, and building the decanomial square--

--which we're going to be playing more with this week.

Books of the Day include more novels (including Regarding the Fountain, which I am SUPER excited to introduce to the younger kid), more random non-fiction books (Matt found the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weaponry and thought that the older kid might like it. I think he's right!), and several selections on civics, political parties, how the government works, and the like. We're really pushing hard on our civics study, which I'd like to continue through Election Day.

Other daily work includes journaling for the younger kid, cursive copywork for the older kid (she was putting zero effort into her own journaling, so I have to think up a better daily creative writing assignment for her for next semester), progress in Wordly Wise (the older kid is on track to finish Book 6 before we leave for our road trip, but the younger kid is taking a snail's pace through Book 4; I may be more strict with her progress next semester), and work in Scratch (the older kid has mostly abandoned this, but the younger kid is still making a new cartoon almost every day, so I'm going to keep encouraging it at least through this semester).

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: The older kid resumed Mandarin class last weekend. The younger kid may or may not attend with her; at first, she flat-out refused, but since the older kid reported that two of their friends are also in the class this semester, she's now said that she'll "try it" next weekend. Regardless, the younger kid has also said that she wants to continue our Spanish study after we finish Song School Spanish next week, so I'm currently researching options for that.

For now, however, both kids are continuing their work in Song School Spanish, and for this week, at least, the older kid is sharing her Mandarin review with the younger kid.

In Math Mammoth this week, the older kid is continuing in percents, and the younger kid is doing an entire week of fractional problem solving before she moves into ratios next week.

Friday's science is one of the subjects that we simply did not get to on Friday (we got caught in a rainstorm on the way to the library, so that when we got home it felt far more appropriate to put on pajamas and read comic books than it did to finish our school work), so we'll be reading the unit on sedimentary rocks and using a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid to test rock samples today. We also begin our study of the internal anatomy of the shark today with the digestive system.

We had a fabulous family trip to the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park yesterday, including conversing with the world best and most enthusiastic park ranger, so today, while the kids listen to our chapters in History of Us, they can use the brochures and postcards from the site, as well as the information that they learned, to make a page for George Rogers Clark in their American Revolution notebooks. This will ideally be practice for what I'd like them to do with the other sites that we'll be visiting on our road trip.

TUESDAY: We missed our homeschool group's playgroup for our field trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art last week, so the younger kid, at least, is very eager to get back to playgroup this week. The older kid doesn't anticipate playgroup the way that the younger kid does, but she's got her own friends there, and she enjoys herself much more than she'll tell you she does.

History of Us is actually a little light on all of the actual battles of the American Revolution, and I'm not sure, either, how many of the battlefields we'll actually go see on our trip (many of them really are, unfortunately, simply grassy fields in the middle of nowhere), but I at least want the kids to be able to put the battles in geographic and historical context, so they'll be completing this battlefield map/timeline and then memorizing the information.

The younger kid's Inside Government Girl Scout badge is one of the studies that I'd like to get completed by Election Day, while the older kid's Animal Helpers badge is simply one that she started with great enthusiasm and then lost interest in, meaning that she just has a couple more activities for me to encourage her to do. Both badges are good cross-curricular unit studies that the children can work on mostly independently, so yay!

WEDNESDAY: Field trip to the Children's Museum!

THURSDAY: Of course the second that we committed to working a weekly voter registration table, the laptop that I intended to rely on to do this voter registration began to catastrophically fail. I'm hoping I can baby it along to do the work we need to do on this day, and then by next week, I will ideally have a brand-new laptop to zip through the work!

I'm banking on the fact that one day of dissolving rocks with hydrochloric acid will not be enough for my little scientists. Even if it is, I'm betting we can find some other cool stuff to dissolve--for one thing, the older kid did lose a molar recently...

The kids built the decanomial square last week, so on this day I'm hoping to explore some extension activities with them--equation creating, pattern making, cubing, etc.

FRIDAY: After reviewing our From Colonies to Country chapters, the kids will zoom in on the Articles of Confederation with this Brainpop lesson.

Our Friday Spanish books remain a big hit. We're a little tired of Sandra Boynton and Bill Martin, Jr., but I've got some Dr. Seuss that I think will work well as a substitute.

The Bicentennial Patch is another special patch program just for this year, since 2016 is Indiana's Bicentennial. We do all of the activities required for the patch (outdoor activities, healthy living, arts and culture, and history) pretty regularly, but we could probably stand another visit to a state park or IU sporting event.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We're back in the groove of a thousand and one Saturday extracurriculars, so I'll attempt to spare my family yet another Sunday day trip and let them lie on the couch and work on their tree house. Except... there is the local university's fall ballet that we *could* attend, and there's a play coming out this weekend that I'd like to go to with Matt, and it *is* about time to go to the apple orchard...

What are YOU up to this week?