Weekly Wrap Up: The End of Week 8

Suddenly I find myself at a strange and unfamiliar place.

A place in which I have actually counted and marked the days and weeks since school began. A place wherein I am aware that next week marks the end of the first quarter–something that I’ve never really paid attention to before.

In the past we’ve had a start date, vacation days and an end date. It’s completely SURREAL to have reached our first check point already! It seems like we only just started a few weeks ago!

Finally this week we returned to our school room and our daily routine and it was so refreshing. For a few weeks, we did mostly basics here in the house for one reason or another. We did school but for some reason it doesn’t FEEL like doing school when it’s in between house cleaning and in pjs like it does when we’re out in the school room focused on school and school only.

I am still in awe of how well we are doing with school this year! It’s amazing how things change when there are no infants or toddlers underfoot. It will be interesting to see how things change again when the preschooler is a couple of years older and reading and doing “real” school, too. I still feel incredibly blessed with how God has provided for our curriculum needs this year. I feel more prepared and equipped to do school the way I’ve always wanted to do it. Every time I say “what a great year this has been!” I feel the need to immediately follow it up with “Praise be to God!” lest boasting and pride brings a turn for the worse. Don’t get me wrong, we have our bad days and our issues with attitude, but overall this year has been really, really good.

This week marked the third full week that Princess has been using her new Teaching Textbooks curriculum and I am so pleased that she is still enjoying it. What a night and day difference!! This week she completed the 2nd unit, so not only is she getting it done without tears but she’s cruising right along at a good pace. I’m so happy that we went this route. If only I could say the same thing about having her do book reports. 😉

We got back on the history and science bandwagon this week after setting it aside for a couple of weeks. We finally finished up the chapter on Mercury and the section about Abraham & Isaac, Jacob & Esau & Joseph. I still can’t wait until we get our timeline figures, (which we should be ordering very soon) because I really think that making the timeline together will help create perspective. One day this week we did history at the park which was especially fun, and Thursday night we made a lentil stew for supper (because that’s what Esau traded his birthright for.) And I’ve really enjoyed watching Princess fully get into the science notebooking. Drama Queen is still a bit young and needs to dictate things to me or copy sentences I write for her. I don’t have her do all the pages because she wears out. But Princess is really throwing herself into making her journal neat and artistic and pretty to look and I enjoy watching her work on it.

OH! AND HOW COULD I ALMOST FORGET?? Last week we received our Westminster Shorter Catechism for Kids workbook. We worked on Lesson 1 all week (What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.) I love this! I only got one book thinking I’d reproduce the pages – except that I can’t make copies right now (long story.) I ended up turning it into more of a notebooking and copywork from the chalkboard type thing with a lot of oral discussion. It worked and the girls got the hang of it pretty quickly. This is the perfect addition to our Charlotte Mason memory verse system and memorizing the books of the bible that we’ve been working on all year. This week we learned Deuteronomy 6: 5-7:

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

What was really fun was listening to the 4 year old chime in as we reviewed past verses, though he never seems to pay much attention while we’re learning new verses and doesn’t often participate in repeating them with us. Learning by osmosis – love it!

Other fun things we did this week: our educational grocery shopping trip, watching the first two episodes of Egypt: Rediscovering a Lost World, listening to the first story on the Jonathan Park audio cd’s we borrowed from a friend, and lots and lots of playing outside in the great weather at the park and at a friend’s house.

I wish I taken pictures of these things, any of these things, but alas I did not. I have to remember to keep the camera in the school room.. and then I have to remember to actually TAKE PICTURES with it. The good news is that you know at least I can say that I wasn’t distracted from teaching them while trying to take cute pictures, right? 😉

This post is linked up to Weekly Wrap up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and the Sunday Best Linky at No Time For Flash Cards.

P.S. Did you know that National Tell A Story Day was this week?