Snow!!! Can you believe this was our first real snow of the season?
It turns out that Luna likes snow almost as much as Syd does!
We got most of last week's plans done, even with the distraction of snow and the Friday Girl Scout meeting that wiped the two introverts of the family out for the rest of the day. Will was a rock star, though, and led the entire meeting of eight girls completely independently, earning herself the Leader in Action badge for the Brownie Wonders of Water journey.
You know when a kid does something cool, and THEY know that it's cool, and so they're super proud of themselves, and they're so proud of themselves that even though they tend to play their emotions close to the vest you can actually tell that they're proud?
Yep, it was like that.
We've got our first five-day school week in what feels like forever this week (and we won't have a five-day school week next week, either, on account of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), but I'm trying to keep my expectations managed, because fencing and ice skating are starting back up, so that cuts into our free time quite a bit, AND it's Girl Scout cookie season, and, as usual, both of my girls have big goals (Syd wants to buy toys for all of the animals at the shelter, and Will is trying to earn money for a hoped-for Girl Scout trip to Costa Rica in 2018).
Memory Work should pick back up more regularly again this week, as well, as extracurriculars and cookie selling mean time in the car, so we can hopefully get Sonnet 116 nailed down, as well as review fraction terminology, the order of operations, and spelling words. Books of the Day include some YA literature and sci-fi for Will, fairy tales, The Whipping Boy for Syd, and Material World, because if the kid is going to visit a third-world country, she should start learning what that looks like.
Our keyboard is broken, so there's no daily keyboard this week, but other daily work includes typing practice, Analytical Grammar/Junior Analytical Grammar, Wordly Wise for Will and a word ladder for Syd, and also for Will, SAT prep on Khan Academy and an online Red Cross first aid class.
And here's the rest of our week!
MONDAY: We somehow managed to put off that demonstration from Story of Science AGAIN last week, and I have no idea how. Or why. And that's just super awesome, because it involves water, and until the plumber comes (please please please today!!!) we don't even HAVE water in the kitchen this week. So... great time for a water-based, messy experiment.
I have had to start a rule that only a parent can check off an assignment as complete. For a long time, I had trusted the kids to complete their independent work independently, then check it off when done, but recently they've been neglecting to give me their completed work to edit, say, in math, and then continuing the next day on the next day's assignment, which means that sometimes they were continuing mistakes that they'd started making in the previous assignment, and they've been "forgetting" to do more distasteful parts of their work, such as diagramming the sentences in Analytical Grammar/Junior Analytical Grammar, and then pitching a fit when I finally see their work and tell them that they have 40 sentences to diagram. So there's going to be more supervision until good habits get re-established.
In Math Mammoth this week, Syd is continuing with calculating fractions, and Will is finishing her review of the order of operations and moving into calculating integers.
I took a Mental Health Afternoon on Friday, so the kids didn't outline their essays as planned; fortunately, we've still got plenty of time to complete the essay-writing process this week before the deadline for the contest that they're both entering. Here's how we write outlines.
This week's Greek god is Poseidon, with no extra activities other than the trading card. I absolutely must sit down this week and plan out our studies for the theme tests on the National Mythology Exam. I've already left it too long, so the next few weeks may be mythology-heavy. Good thing the kids enjoy it so much!
The kids did their observations for their long-term assignment in our Animal Behavior MOOC, but they didn't take good notes. I don't know what good they thought that would do, but yay for homeschooling, in that we can repeat assignments that didn't get done correctly the first time! We'll try again this week, sigh...
TUESDAY: Today is rough draft day for the essays. Rough draft day is the worst day. Remind me that it gets easier after rough draft day.
I could probably wring some more hands-on activities out of Module 3 of our Animal Behavior MOOC, but I feel like the kids have grasped the important aspects of animal communication and signal behavior, so I'm ready to have them finish the viewing assignments and take the test.
Will's work on her Cadette Journey made me suddenly realize, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, that Syd also wants to earn her Bronze award this year--actually, she *needs* to earn it this year, as she bridges in the fall--and to do that, she also needs to complete a Journey! Fortunately, there are two other Juniors in our troop who also want to complete a Journey and earn the Bronze, so she'll have some company. Regardless, we're going to start busting through the Agent of Change Journey, which actually fits really well into our current studies, since the Power of One award, which comes first, is all about women who've made a difference. That's the same topic that Syd is writing about in her essay this week!
Our Tuesday homeschool playgroup may be meeting at an indoor playground an hour away. I don't feel enthusiastic about this, but I guess we'll be able to knock out our Memory Work, and then listen to our next in-car audiobook, sigh. We finished the entire Dark is Rising series last week, so we're ready for a new adventure! Sword in the Stone, perhaps?
WEDNESDAY: Rough drafts are all about simply vomiting the words out, so it's good to have a couple of days of editing and crafting that final draft, doncha know?
THURSDAY: Over winter break, Syd, Matt, and I worked through creating all of the regular polygons, from the triangle through the dodecagon, from Paper and Scissors Polygons (more on that another time). The goal on this day is for the kids to help me mount and label them for display, because they turned out so awesome!
FRIDAY: Matt and I are designing a printable decanomial square in centimeters, ideally to offer for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers. On this day, the kids will help me cut out and mount the pieces to foam core, both so I can test the design and hash out good instructions for others to use the material, but also so that we can have our own nice copy. The decanomial square is a mad useful manipulative, especially for upper elementary and middle school!
Hopefully, I'll have kept the kids on task better for their Animal Behavior MOOC's observation assignment, so that they'll actually have the information to complete this step. I'm very curious to see what queries they each come up with!
SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: We've got a couple more weeks until ballet starts, so it's one more long free weekend before the real late winter grind begins. The kids will for sure sell Girl Scout cookies every stinking day. I kind of want to go to the zoo. The cookie selling is cutting into our family hiking time, but maybe with a long weekend, we can squeeze it in. And with Matt home an extra day, he'll probably want to help me build shelves for my record album collection, don't you think?
What are YOUR plans for the week?
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