This is my very favorite bookshelf in our house. It’s completely full, so I don’t know what will happen the next time I get a really good book, but for now, almost all of my favorite books are here. There are a few missing titles, due to their placement on other shelves in the house (like Gone with the Wind), but, in general, this is “comfort reading” at its finest!
No field trips this week, but it was still a fun, busy time!
We’ve now started all of our subjects but Latin. I really did have good intentions about getting Turkey and Bunny going with First Form Latin, but between their complaining and teacher fatigue, I gave up after two days. Good thing there’s always next week!
We started on our history timeline this week. I’m very excited about trying this again. We had the Sonlight Book of Time the first time we studied ancient history, but I found it to be very difficult to work with. I was very excited to find this hardcover timeline book, for which there are four sets of timeline figures, from the ancients through the present day, as well as a placement guide, which takes all of the guesswork out of figuring out the spacing for 100s of events! I’m still toying with how we’re going to use it. I think instead of adding the figures for each daily history reading assignment, we’ll add all of the events we learned about for the week on Friday, and use it as a review. We’ll see how it progresses as we go through the year…I may change my mind!
Science continues to be a highlight of our school days. As we continued our overview of the solar system, we made a balloon solar system to hang from the ceiling of the school room. They are not to scale, in size or distance, at all, and we did have a problem with the Earth balloon deflating, although I was able to patch it up. It’s a fun visual reminder though, and Chickadee loves pointing at the balloons whenever she visits us in school!
We also began our study of the Jewish year in preparation for Rosh Hashanah next week. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and since we’re going to be learning a lot about the Israelites as we study history this year, the timing is perfect. I’ll even be able to get out the dreidels I bought at Target several Christmases ago! We learned about Shabbat this week, and looked a bit at what Hebrew looks like (the children were very surprised!). I may try making a turban challah next week, although, since I’ve never had it before, I won’t know if I’ve done it right. Then again, maybe that’s a good thing!
The rest of the week was pretty standard. Ladybug had her first math test (perfect score), and her first spelling test (only missed one), which was very exciting to her. Turkey and Bunny were a little less enthused about their math and spelling tests, but they are looking forward to their first Greek myths test next week…go figure! I haven’t decided if we’re going to have school on Labor Day or not…maybe we’ll just do something fun like go apple picking instead!
Chickadee hasn’t quite figured the pony out, but she sure does love to push it around!
This line always makes me laugh!
Okay, let’s make like a bread truck and haul buns ladies. Rosie O’Donnell as Doris Murphy in A League of Their Own
It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great. Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own
This weekend, the Cardinals celebrated Fredbird’s birthday. As it was the annual Build a Bear giveaway day today, the one game we try to make it to every year, we were there when the gates opened!
Chickadee doesn’t need a ticket to the game yet, so she didn’t get her own Fredird, but Moose already had one at home, so he generously shared his with her (and she did not want to let it go)!
There was confetti:
And chalk art:
And, of course, we sang “Happy Birthday” to everyone’s favorite mascot. But the highlight of the game was the fact that Fredbird’s friends from around MLB came to wish him a happy birthday! (And he even got a chance to rough up the Pirate Parrot a bit…in a very friendly way, of course, while trying to hit his birthday piñata). They even brought him a present!
The Cards didn’t win this one, but it was still fun to be there for the party!
It’s been years since I last painted my fingernails. I’m not very good at doing it…it always ends up smudgy and uneven…and things like washing dishes tends to make polish chip so fast that it’s just not worth the time it takes to apply it. But I saw this color in the store, and it made me so happy to look at it that I decided to give painting my nails another try. It’s a textured polish, so smudges and unevenness aren’t as much of an issue, and even though I know it’s a just a matter of time until it starts chipping, until then, I get to look at this very pretty color. Such an easy way to brighten up my day!
We started our sixth year of homeschooling this week! On Sunday, before we had even officially started, we had a field trip to the Art Museum, to learn about ancient Greek art, as it relates to Greek mythology (something we’ll be studying this year).
Our actual first day of school was on Monday…always a fun day!
In addition to our fun first day traditions (schultüte and the children designing new pictures to go in the front of their binders), we also got started on most of our subjects, including history, astronomy, and new levels of math. We got started on Language Arts this week, too, although we didn’t cover every aspect of it yet, and I’m also waiting until next week to begin Latin.
On Tuesday, we went to the Science Center to see the planetarium, as well as learn about archaeology:
Since we’re restarting the four-year history cycle this year, our history studies this week focused on what history is, why we study it, and what archeologists do. When we were at the art museum, I found this fun little “excavating history,” kit, which allowed the children to pretend they were archaeologists, and dig out and brush off a sculpture. It was a lot more work than any of us expected to free the Greek athlete from the plaster, and I think we all learned that I am not patient enough to be an archeologist, as I went in search of the hammer after a while!
I think we got the new school year off to a good start! Next week will be a bit more ordinary as we stay home and settle into our full routine, but it was fun getting out and doing some interesting thing the first week of school!
