Weekly Wrap-Up (grain of salt required)

Well, haven't we been quite the relaaaaaxed homeschoolers this week. A friend of mine asked me this week, "So are you kind of winding down for the summer?" And I had to tell her that yes, I guess we were, but really, since we're not that wound up to begin with, I don't see a need to change our lifestyle dramatically for the summer. We're out of the whole school paradigm anyway, so we're free to do what we want, when we want. That said, we'll travel to see family a bit, we'll do swim lessons, etc., and the neighbors are out of school, we've talked with a couple friends about doing some sort of unit study together in preparation for the Olympics (when we'll get in our TV time for the year!) so my main goal for the summer is just to read aloud to the kids at least once a day (not including our morning Bible reading), every day. (Ian has asked, because he's aware of Oscar's schedule, "Mom, do we take a break from school in the summer, too?" and my answer is, "Well, we don't attend school, so we can't take a break, and besides, learning never stops; we learn every day!" Big bright smile. He just loves me for it. I know.)

Ok, so this week? It looked sort of like this. See, we start out looking halfway respectable:

Literature/History -- We finished A Llama in the Family and started Misty of Chincoteague. We read "The Ungrateful Guest" and "Alexander and Bucephalus" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold.

Math -- Ian and I worked on a couple sheets of word problems from our trusty edhelper.com. There were some on-the-spot calculations in our discussions of, say, the number of days until each one's birthday (answer: Eliza-3. Ian - 53). Probably other life math as well that I'm just not recalling.

Now it gets kinda crazy ...
Writing -- Let's see, Ian and Oscar did a ton of writing in their spy notebooks today. They got a huge bonus in the form of a firetruck and ambulance pulling up down the street -- the firefighters even gave them stickers. More writing (it counts; I corrected his grammar and spelling and he revised) occurred during the whole Zindernufe episode.

Music/Art -- Does having a dance party to The Wiggles as a way to combat the late afternoon crankies until Daddy gets home count? Yes, I think I was hot and sweaty enough by the end that it should count. :-) Oh, you don't like that? Shaking our sillies out ain't highbrow enough? Well, my friend owns a Kindermusik business and Eliza started a 5-week class on Thursday. And we listened to some classical in the car and played Name That Instrument.

Science -- Physics! Yes, we did hands-on, or would that be body-on, physics, in the form of helping to set up and then skidding down a Slip N Slide at the home of our friends the Atkinsons, when Ian spent the night on Wednesday. (When I say "we" did this, I mean that the kids' role was to set up and skid; my role was to sit on the front steps drinking tea with Greta and try not to cringe as our kids barreled into her unperturbed crawling baby.) Oh, here we go. Here's some serious stuff. A friend of our family, Karen Nyberg (whom I interviewed once for an article about that hasn't sold), is on the current space shuttle mission, so the kids and I spent some time poking around the NASA website, watching the videos of the launch and spacewalks, playing some cool educational games, reading the journal, etc.

So, that was pretty much the week. We had several playdates, probably more than usual -- as well as the fire station trip -- which not only made our "schooling" even more relaxed, but helped my unsocialized homeschooled children make some contact with other unsocialized homeschooled kids. :-)