Work Plans for the Week of May 30, 2017: Let's Try That Again, Shall We?

Last week was not a successful week, schoolwork-wise. For a variety of reasons, the kids got very little done. They did keep up well with their math, and Will kept up with grammar, but I have to create and enforce a different system for finished work this week, because both kids have begun to simply set their finished work next to their work areas, instead of bringing it to me. If I don't see it, I don't mark it, and they blithely move on the next day, and if they've made errors, those are compiled the further they advance, sigh. Will, in particular, is not going to be pleased that she somehow forgot what a linking verb is between Lessons 11 and 12, and Syd refuses to understand that drawing her angles on a separate page, and then "losing" that page before I had a chance to see it, has the same result as not drawing the angles at all--she's doing it again today!

Regardless, the week as a whole was full and happy. The kids spent loads of time preparing for a Girl Scout meeting that was an outdoor cookout feast--


--Will has been working with Luna several times a day on their homework from obedience school--



--we spent a full day at the Children's Museum, volunteering and playing, the kids spent another full day at their wilderness class, and then we spent the weekend visiting family in Michigan.

Yesterday we took lots of naps.

Because of that, you'll find the annotations for most of this week's assignments in last week's post, where they were first assigned. And honestly, we may not be much more productive this weekend--summer activities, such as this afternoon's trip to the public pool and tomorrow's all-day trip to the zoo, are peppered throughout the coming days, but heck. Why homeschool if it's not so we can go to the pool with friends, and spend the whole day at the zoo just because we want to?

Memory work for the week consists of the first eleven lines of Beowulf recited in Anglo-Saxon, standard conversions, and Greek vocabulary. Books of the Day include some sneaky selections from the kids' MENSA reading lists, a biography of Juliette Gordon Low, a leftover book on the Celts, and the rest of the One Crazy Summer trilogy for Will. Other daily work includes creative writing for Syd and cursive copywork for Will, typing practicing on Typing.com and progress on their MENSA reading lists for both, Wordly Wise 7 for Will and a word ladder for Syd, a Greek language lesson or review and a Hoffman Academy keyboard lesson or practice for both, and SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will.

And here's the rest of our week!

TUESDAY: At least hiding their work from me until I find it while tidying over the weekend lets me give them exact assignments for Math Mammoth and Analytical Grammar this week--usually the kids just correct the latest lesson and complete the next lesson. Notice that for each of these, I've also instructed them to give their work directly to an adult to mark. They put their completed assignments in the face of an adult, or their work plans for the day aren't complete--mwa-ha-ha!

Most of the rest of this day's work is reassigned from last week, although Will has some extra time to work on a Girl Scout badge, and Syd has big plans to run a bake stand in our driveway before the drive-in movies this weekend (it's kind of genius, because almost every car headed to the drive-in will have to drive by her bake stand first, and if it's a nice weekend for an outdoor movie, traffic will be stalled, meaning that every car will have plenty of time to just sit there and look at her mouth-watering treats), so she'll be working on that every school day this week, in preparation for her Friday debut.

WEDNESDAY: Day at the zoo! If there's one thing that you can guarantee about my kids, it's that they're game for any and every trip to any and every zoo and aquarium that you offer them. We're going to have a wonderful time.

THURSDAY: The only new assignment on this day is more work on Girl Scout badges--with so much make-up work to do this week, we're not really able to progress in most of our units, so Girl Scouts is filling the few gaps in the school week. Good thing there's ALWAYS something to do in Girl Scouts!

FRIDAY: Since our only Medieval history assignment last week was our field trip to look at Medieval manuscripts in the Lilly Library--which was AMAZING, by the way!--we actually are free to move on in our Medieval history unit this week. I didn't spend a ton of time looking up enrichment activities or projects for this week's chapter in Story of the World v. 2, but at least the kids can get it read and get the quiz and mapwork done, and I'll have a chance for more research this week.

One of the few flaws in our Story of the World spine is its lack of dates in the text. The author doesn't want the kids focusing on memorizing dates at the expense of understanding the events and their context, but it's just one more thing that I have to add to the curriculum to better suit my older children. I'll be printing one nice copy of this timeline, and for use in a binder or as a pull-out, and the kids can help me order and construct it and then add timeline figures for what we've already studied this semester. It's no basement timeline, but I'm hoping that it will be a suitable replacement.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: No three-day weekend this weekend! Luna has obedience school, but thankfully that's our only scheduled activity, because summer extracurriculars begin next week.

And we'll have a five-day school week for a change!

What are YOUR plans for the week?