Weekly Wrap-Up: Snow & A Broadway Musical
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 8:23PM 
Today I'm linking up with Kris, at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Weekly Wrap-Up.
The big thaw is underway in the southeast.... here's what left of the snow in our backyard ~ funny to see green grass with snow in the background. The swing set and raised garden beds are literally an ice skating rink (which provided lots of fun today for the kids!). While all of the traditional schoolchildren in our area have missed FIVE days of school, we have schooled each day. If there is ever a week where I needed confirmation that homeschooling was the way to go, this was the week!
**Before I go any farther with this post -- I know the font size, etc... is wonky in this post! I cannot for the life of me figure out why. But, it is late, and I just want to get to bed and trust that the readers will be forgiving (just this once!).
I'm going to start breaking my weekly wrap-up post into subject areas.... I think it is easier than breaking it into days, which is my normal approach. Here goes:
Math: Miss B is doing well with long division and drawing symmetrical shapes. We continue to drill the math facts - normally that has been done on an iPad app, but this week I pulled out the dreaded WORKSHEETS. Both
kids drilled every day and guess what? It did not kill them! GMan is officially half way through his Horizons 1 book and LOVES math. Is this my child? Where did he come from? Today at the library he picked out Go, Fractions.
History: Dad was home for three days of the week (since his office was closed) and took the time to relax with the kids and watch the entire series from The History Channel - America, The Story of Us. We had gotten this set for free last year (through a special promotion for educators) and I am so glad we own the series. I learned so much, and the videos kept everyone interested.
We also worked through Chapter One in The Story of The World, Nomads and The First Farmers. I am loving SOTW because of the engaging stories and short, succinct lessons. We are supplementing with readings and activities - and TONS of videos and library books. Right now we are reading The Boy of The Painted Cave, which both of the children are enjoying quite a bit. They continue to work in their notebooks, which consists of the maps and activities from the activity guide and also some narration sheets I made. Miss B writes her own summaries, and I let GMan dictate them to me. It is working well.
Science: We did a couple of Pop Bottle Science activities this week - both very simple and quick, but demonstrating important principles. One was about inertia - we took our bottom half of the pop bottle and put an index card on top - with a quarter on top of that. When we flicked the index card off the bottle, the quarter fell in the bottle. Cool. The next was dealing with the centrifugal force of the earth - simply demonstrated by putting a marble in our bottle and spinning it to watch the marble stay on the sides of the bottle. I love these experiments for GMan.
Next week we starts a Topps unit, so we'll be spending more time on science.
Grammar & Spelling: Easy Grammar for Miss B and First Language Lessons for GMan. Miss B is doing Sequential Spelling and we had four "tests" this week. I love this gentle approach to spelling.
Field Trip: What an amazing time we had seeing the Broadway production of Beauty & The Beast this week. We weren't sure if we would be able to make it to downtown Atlanta because of the icy road conditions, but once we heard the roads were ok, we were on our way! I had seen the show before, but it never ceases to amaze me what an elaborate and entertaining show this is. Miss B invited a friend of ours (who is 6 and loves princesses) and her mom to come with us. We had a great time! This was the highlight of our week.
Miss B and her friend (The Princess Lover!) at the Fabulous Fox Theatre
Miscellaneous: Both children are entering a homeschool literature fair which will happen at the end of February. The fair entails choosing a book, then doing a book report, display board, and hands on project. We did this last year and it was such a wonderful experience. Miss B has chosen Calico Bush for this year, and GMan has chosen The Grouchy Ladybug. We are starting these projects now, so Miss B has been learning to knit as part of hers - a dear friend of mine has been spending a lot of time with her helping her make a pair of fingerless gloves. We met at Starbucks the first chance the roads were clear this week, and she had a knitting lesson.
Gman and I checked out lots of ladybug books today and found an idea to make your own ladybug catcher - and of course we will raise some ladybugs soon!As I look back at the week I see that the fine arts are lacking, especially art. In the coming weeks I'd like to start our composer of the week and a few more art lessons or classes. Miss B continues with her weekly piano lessons and has a competition coming in March. GMan will be getting music each week in a co-op class I am teaching for his age group.
We all appreciated the pace this week. Everyone was forced to slow down and stay put, which suited us just fine. Next week co-op begins and it's back to business as usual!
Reader Comments (6)
Glad to see we aren't the only ones who don't take "snow days".
What great timing to read Katy and the Big Snow! It looks like you had a great week.
We don't take snow days either! Being in Maine, we would be taking A LOT of days off! LOL (We just got 18 inches on Wednesday alone!) Great week!
Jessy
http://oursideofthemtn.blogspot.com
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Our was The Story of Us? I am thinking of using it next year with my older son as a starting point for a full year of American History. I thought about taking each era and exploring it for 3 weeks (literature, read alongs, fine arts, history, etc.) I like to build my own curriculum, and thought that video would give me my jumping off point. Just wondered what you thought about it.
Thanks!
Nicole
Nicole -- that sounds a little like a KONOS approach (except not with the character trait as the organizer - you are going to use the time period in history). I think that's a great idea!!! I bet your son could take a time period after watching the DVD and run with it. Thanks for stopping by!
I love that science experiment!
And I also love "Beauty & the Beast". We saw it on Broadway a few years ago and I was in awe when the beast changed into the prince literally right in front of our eyes! How did they do that????