Boy these weeks just fly by.  I am feeling the end of year crunch.  I'll be finished by the first week in June with Pumpkin and NuNu if I keep to my plan.  We took a break from our normal schedule to see a string group at the Kennedy Center today so I rushed to get all our work done by Thursday.  The show was absolutely awesome!  Black Violin is the name of the group.  They blend classical violin/viola/bass with Hip Hop beats.  Just delightful.

Remember the fact that Pumpkin likes to bake?  Well no trip to DC is complete without a trip to Georgetown Cupcakes a.k.a DC Cupcakes.  Such a small, quaint place with a huge impact in the area and on TV.  The owners, Sophie and Katherine, were so very gracious to come out and take pictures with the girls.  And the cupcakes?  Absolutely delicious.  Expensive, but delicious and worth every single dollar. The icing is starting to melt (in the picture) as we walked from the shop to our car a few blocks - DC parking!

What else went on in our home school this week.  NuNu's soccer team made their very first goal of the season.


 

And....we are in Week 24 of MFW Explorers - 1850, learning about each state as they entered the Union.  We are also learning about each president in order.  I admit that I am a TWEAKER.  Instead of using the president notebooking sheets included with MFW, I decided to use the student sheets that are a part of BrightIdeas press, All American History.  My kids have done so much summarizing and outlining for History and Language Arts that I just wanted them to have a "fill in the blank" type of sheet.  The All American History sheets fit the bill.  I have this curriculum on the shelves for my high schooler for next year so I broke it out a little early for the youngers. 


Princess is in Week 25 of her MFW WHL.  We looked at Pride & Prejudice this week as she just finished the book and is preparing to write a paper on marriage.  I can't wait to read it.  Now my younger kids are walking around the house saying "make haste, make haste" with a British accent.  We just love educational,  history movies.
 
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So I finally got a new camera and with it a renewed sense to blog. In our homeschool we are plugging along in school and will probably finish our scheduled lessons sometime in June. There are no huge exciting activities or aha moments this week but I have found a way to veer off of my MFW lesson plan grid to make things a little more interesting. I'm including a lot of my own notebooking pages for the people we study. This week we did - Antoine Lavoisier, Eli Whitney, and Robert Fulton. With every reading assignment the girls have to outline the text and then summarize on the notebook page ala the Writing With Skill way. I am working from a 20 week sample Susan Wise Bauer so generously gave customers. The skills the girls are learning are carried across the curriculum especially in History. The outline/summarizing combo really helps with reading comprehension and I hear the girls telling Dad when he gets home what they learned. Yep, mission accomplished. There is some learning going on here.


I wish more curriculum providers would be generous with their samples. It helps the consumer to get a feel for how a piece of curriculum will work on a day to day basis in the homeschool. I do plan to buy the WWS at the convention so obviously giving generous samples work.  I hear from the WTM forums that many homeschoolers working from the sample plan to buy the hard copy. If we like it enough and it works well for us we will buy the whole kit and kaboodle. When will the curriculum publishers get that?? Another example, I won a copy of All American History I from BrightIdeas press. I studied it and like it enough that I purchased the 2nd part to use with my high schooler for the next two years. So because of a freebie they got a purchase from me that they otherwise would of never received. So if you are listening curriculum providers - we need more complete samples.


On another note here is what I am most proud of in my school year. The artwork my kiddos produce, not under my instruction mind you. I outsource Art. Here are their projects:




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Hop over to Beautiful Feet Books to learn about their giveaway!
If you heard about the give away from me be sure to enter my name (listed in the 'About Me' section) so we will get an extra entry!

Best Wishes

IHOP Pancakes ...Oh my!

The highlight of the week was attending a one hour program at IHOP. The staff took the group through the IHOP kitchen where the kids got a chance to flip pancakes on the grill and learn about the way the IHOP kitchen works (no, I didn't get pictures but I'm waiting for the restaurant to send me the pics they took). Then the kids made their own pancakes with all the fixins on an electric grill set up in our sitting area. The girls got a chance to socialize with their best buddies at a booth of their own. The moms had their own social hour at a booth of their own. Best of all, they get a button that entitles them to a free kids meal every time they visit our neighborhood IHOP until the age of 13. Awesome! They left with goodie bags containing coupons, nick nacs, and a coveted IHOP mug. I'm excited to drink coffee & tea at home in an IHOP mug. It's just the little things that make life grand.

What else got done this week? Hmm...let's see. Sent off two applications for a Math & Science summer program. The application required a 200 word essay from my 9th & 7th grader so that counted as Language Arts. Princess is working on another application for a summer program at my alma mater. My fingers are crossed for this one. It's one of the cheapest summer programs I've found for high schoolers and she gets to take a Math, Science, and History class. I don't believe its too early to be thinking about these types of programs as I want to make her transcript attractive for college admissions. Making sure she is rich in outside academic experiences is a top priority. I can't believe so many of these programs are $1500+. I'm going to have to start saving now for next summer. I also gave her a sampling of 7 PSAT questions dealing with sentence errors from this site and she didn't fare well. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done at home as well. This site was helpful to me as well in understanding testing strategies. I know it is technically two years away but it's never to early to start preparing, right?

One last thing. I was suppose to load a photo of DD10's project from her Engineering for Kids classes I mentioned in the last wrap-up. Well a robotic arm was the final project. Here it is:

Well that about wraps it up for us around here. We are still chugging along in our curriculum; still behind but I'm making adjustments. How was your week? Join the weekly wrap up by visiting the weird, unsocialized homeschoolers blog and sign up and see what other homeschooling families have been doing this week.

Daily Distractions and Next year's plans....

Moving along on the journey. This week has been quite productive. We were suppose to take advantage of free admission to George Washington's Mt. Vernon but we had snow on the ground Sunday night into Monday so I knew traffic wouldn't be kind. It would have been nice to visit since we are at this point in our history studies. We went to Mt. Vernon last year and the kids hardly remember the trip. They get the governor's mansion in Williamsburg, Monticello, and Mt. Vernon confused...sigh....I guess we will have to visit those places again.

We all watched the Tale of Two Cities over the weekend as a preview to my high schooler's reading of the book. My MFW lesson plans suggest looking at the movie first as it helps to guide the student through the difficult themes introduced in the book. Everybody loved the movie and is asking to watch it again! What? Seriously? They usually hate academic movies but this one was a winner. I actually checked two versions of the movie out from the library. We watched this one and we will look at this one next. The movie provides insight into the French Revolution and many teachable moments related to character.

Last time I posted I shared a pic of my DD10 and her creative cardboard canoe project. This week it was her Lego creations. This is how she usually spends a lot of her spare time - playing Legos. We have a Engineering place for kids in town that I wanted to sign her up for but I made a mistake and signed her up for the mechanical engineering class-no legos involved. (I had two great photos of her Lego projects but can't get them loaded up in time for the wrap-up. If you want to see them check back in a day or so) Now I'm wondering if I want to pay more $$ for another class. We are entering the Spring season of purchasing next year's curriculum so I'm looking at my budget wondering how to fit it all in. Speaking of curriculum.....

I love it when I find great online sites with free downloadable projects that fit in with what I'm using. I posted last time about the Chemistry unit found on homeschoolshare. This week my online find of the week is here. There are a lot of useful printables under her Geography tab. The printables are specific to MFW ECC which I will be using next year with a lot of beefing up from the Ultimate Guide to Geography and Trail Guide.

Since I hate wrap-ups with no pictures, I posted a random pic of our biggest daily distraction just so you would have something to look at:



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Well I've been incognito for quite some time. I have to feel motivated to write and I just haven't been feeling it lately. My camera is on its last leg as well so you can not blog without having good pictures. I do believe I was able to capture a few good shots this week.


1. The cell experiment with Jello. My DD10 just loves experiments and I am working hard to research resources to liven up her science studies.

There are just way too many choices in the market for homeschooling. You can literally be up all night (it is now 12:24 AM) looking at samples online. I think I'm going to go out on a limb and just pull library books and read about science topics, find experiments that further explore the topic, and have DD write a summary about what she learns. I have such a hard time letting go of the notion that I need a curriculum provider to put everything in a grid for me to make sure my kids are learning. OOOO....I found some great material on homeschoolshare for a chemistry unit study. Now I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

What else have we been up to sense my last post?

2. hanging out with new friends from co-op. Mondays are the kids favorite day of the week b/c of co-op.

3. We are waaaayyyyy behind in MFW Explorers to 1850. I don't know how to get everything done in one week. My grid says its week 20 something and we are in Week 15. I believe we are like 8 weeks behind. Maybe I'm going to have to skip some weeks to not end up schooling all summer. ...sigh...

What's going on in academics?

4. We used Easy Grammar last year but I have to shake things up so I added BJU Grammar to hit some issues I see that come up in my kids' writing. In my work with them I often refer back to topics they learned in Easy Grammar that way it keeps the knowledge fresh in their brains. For example, I often put problem sentences that I find in their writing on the board for us to figure out what is wrong. We start by putting parenthesis around the prepositional phrase (Easy Grammar), identifying the subject and verb of the sentence, and drawing a line between the subject and predicate. By the time we do this they are able to see that conjunctions are missing or they used the wrong participle part of a verb, etc. We don't really diagram past this exercise but I think it is really helpful to help them see how they should write complete sentences. I like that BJU gives you paragraphs at the end of each lesson so you can find errors. I have learned that it usually takes multiple resources to address different academic needs. However, it can definitely get expensive.

5. I just captured the picture below. DD10 decided to construct her own Paddle to the Sea out of a cardboard box. Isn't it great? It's equipped with navigation, a dog catcher at the end (why would you need this in the sea?) and a telescope. Her imagination at work, love it! Maybe it's the Mechanical Engineering classes she's been attending for the last 4 weeks that has her juices flowing. I really like the 4 books in the Beautiful Feet Geography through Literature series. We have really learned a lot about the river systems and industries in the US that have been spawned by the river.

Perhaps I will have more spurts of motivation to keep my blog. I've been spending a lot of time on the Well Trained Mind forums learning from so many veteran homeschoolers. I do believe that forum is the single most important resource that I have found where I've learned so much about this journey.

What went on in your homeschool world this week? Join the weekly wrap up by visiting the weird, unsocialized homeschoolers blog and sign up and see what other homeschooling families have been doing this week.

Washington DC Excursion

The highlight of the week was taking the metro into Washington, DC to the Natural Museum of Natural History and the National Building Museum.

Waking up at 6 in the morning, catching the 40 minute train ride at 8:30 and walking in the rain for blocks lends itself to an exhausting day. But it was all worth it.

The kids got to solve a Mystery of unidentified bones found in Yorktown, VA by examining her bones in the Anthropology Lab at the Natural History museum. I learned a lot to say the least about what our remains tells us about how we live.
Can you tell how excited they are to touch human bones?
We had 30 minutes to explore the rest of the museum before heading over to the building museum. If you've ever seen Night at the Museum starring Ben Stiller, this is truly what the museum looks like. However, it is my understanding that the film was not shot here. I couldn't help but notice the overt Evolution message all through the exhibits. That was a bit annoying.
The building museum offered a great lesson on geodesic design (which I had never heard of) and the kids actually got to work together as a team to build one out of aluminum poles. We then explored the Lego exhibit and other exhibits on the buildings and city plan of Washington, DC.





This was definitely one of our best trips. Reminds me of the great privilege it is to homeschool and I enjoy every minute of it - Well most of the time.

What went on in your homeschool world this week? Join the weekly wrap up by visiting the weird, unsocialized homeschoolers blog and sign up and see what other homeschooling families have been doing this week.