A Productive Week - Collage Friday
Friday, October 25, 2013 at 5:00AM 
This has been a very productive week. I'm not quite sure where the days went, but I do know we were busy and learning - even though Anna was under the weather one of the days.
We are in our 11th week of school and starting to see the fruits of our labor from the transition to Classical Conversations.
Grant's memory work is blowing me out of the water, and Anna's organizational skills are improving by leaps and bounds. I'm able to be much more "hands off" with the kids these days, which leaves me with mixed feelings.
The week was full of piano practices, choir practices, and baseball games. We are very blessed, indeed. It was a week to not take those blessing lightly, either.
Our local homeschool community suffered a great loss this week. I've been asking you for a long time to pray for Greg, a homeschool father of three. He had been suffering with Melanoma, and on Sunday went to his eternal home. Greg's wife and children have been a beacon of faith to all of us, and I would ask that you continue to pray for them during such a difficult time in their lives.
I think the older we get the more aware we are of the huge amount of suffering and pain there is in our broken world. Thank goodness for the promise we have in Jesus Christ.
Tuesday is CC Day!
I hope you can tell from the blog this school year what a blessing Classical Conversations is for our homeschool!
Tuesday (even though it's an early and LONG day) is our favorite day of the week.
I'm realizing that the Foundations memory work really IS ENOUGH, and I am learning to trust the process of CC and not go crazy supplementing at home.
Grant is thriving in Foundations, and Anna is learning SO much in Challenge A!
The science project in Grant's class this week was making this simple model of the solar system. It was easy and very effective! Last week the tutor took us all outside and we made the solar system to scale on the sidewalk using various sizes of balls and gems (to represent asteroid belts). Simple.
Grant is making many friends at CC, too. I snapped this picture of he and a friend before classes started on Tuesday. They were reading a book together. Don't you love that?
English Grammar is a subject that is amazing me in Classical Conversations, too. Our tutor found a really effective rainbow where the kids could copy out all the pronouns they have learned thus far. What amazes me is how Anna is now using this same information in Challenge, on a much deeper level. I think Leigh Bortins is a genius!
*By the way, I like the suggested English Grammar resources from Brandy at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood.
Next week I have a post planned about how we are notebooking through some of our memory work. Grant's been making some great notebooking pages and I'm anxious to share them with you!
Odds and Ends From the Week
Here's a collage with randomness from our week - just things I wanted to share with you!
Dinner in the crock pot over the weekend was Slow Cooker Sausage and Pierogies. Oh. Yum.
We were on the go for several appointments this week. We use this time for history - I adore the Story of the World Audio CDs read by Jim Weiss. They were a great investment for our homeschool!
Anna did her science presentation this week on Scarabs (otherwise known as the Dung Beetle!). She had picked this necklace up at a museum we went to a few years ago when studying the Ancients. I think she would stay stuck in this time period if she could, because all roads lead back to the Ancients in her book!
She now has 10 science reports under her belt in Challenge A - I'm so proud of her and the work she is doing!
The Best Halloween Ever made an appearance this week, too. Anna loved these books, and now Grant does, too!
Operation Christmas Child Update/Resources
Will you follow along with me as I prepare my heart for traveling to Ecuador with Operation Christmas Child?
I'm trying to involve my children and community as much as possible!
100 GO Boxes arrived this week, just waiting to be filled with the love of Christ!
Our CC group will be having a large box packing party, and a dear friend of mine will be host a box packing open house on a Saturday in November. I'm so very excited!
A friend of mine loaned me the story of Nate Saint: On a Wing and a Prayer. I read through it and cannot wait to read it aloud to my children in November!
Anna is organizing a class service project of making rubber band bracelets for the shoe boxes. She has enough to make 600 bracelets, but I think their goal is 100!
{Speaking of Anna, she has started her own blog! If you'd like to stop by and give her some encouragement, she blogs at Music & More With Anna}
Giveaways
Currently there are 2 big giveaway on the blog. Be sure to enter soon!
Great Homeschool Conventions Family Pass (& More!)
Apologia's What We Believe Curriculum
I am very thankful for this Collage Friday community. I learn so much from each of your blogs - Friday is my favorite blogging day of the week!
If you'd like to link, you can do so in a couple of ways:
- Enter your link below. Be sure to link to your post with photo collages and link back to this post (or include the Collage Friday button on your blog).
- Share your photo collage(s) on Instagram, FB, G+, or Twitter - use the hashtag #collagefriday so I can find you!
Reader Comments (10)
I'm so very sorry to hear about your friend. So sorry. I will be praying.
I is so enjoyable to hear how excited you are about your school this year. I love all the work they are producing and I especially love the pronoun rainbow. I am going to have to use that with Quentin and James.
Perhaps I missed it ... is this your first year with CC? I have several real-life friends that homeschool w/ CC and I am strongly considering it. :)
I love Grant's solar system model. Very cute!
I love the book "On a Wing and a Prayer" and plan to read it to my kids this year when we study South America. :)
--Gena
I am sorry about the loss of your friend :(
I am really enjoying reading about your experience with Classical Conversations. I agree with you that Mrs. Bortins is a genius - I can't stop reading through her book. I put it away and within hours I pull it off the shelf again!
I can't wait to hear more about your trip to the Equator!
I am so happy for you all. It is certainly nice to have such a wonderful educational fit to your family. I am sorry for the loss to your homeschool community.
Blessings, Dawn
I am so sorry for the loss of your friend Greg. I'm praying for his family.
So pleased that CC is continuing to work so well for you. Heading over to check out Anna's blog now!
I look forward to learning more about CC from you (and Kim!). It sounds perfect for you guys. I love reading about what you all are doing each week. I also love all the artsy projects - the solar system the rubber band bracelets. So cute.
We continue to pray for you and the details and children surrounding your trip to Ecuador in Dec. What a blessing! We will be reading Nate Saint's biography near the first of the year, when we begin our study on South America.
And we also continue to pray for the sweet family who's husband and daddy is now in Heaven. Thank you for accompanying us Friday night. Such a hard, hard time...
I am so sorry to hear about the loss of one of your CC family's dad. That is heart breaking :( What a difficult thing for that family. Praying for comfort.
I am slowing learning to trust CC's plan too. It is enough.
I hope you have a good week!