Well…the time has come. Our last week of school before an 8-week summer break. (Sort of.) Technically, it’s not my last week because my teens actually have two weeks of school to go, but since I spend the most time on my younger kids’ activities, and they are finished, it seems like my last week, too.
I don’t really know how I feel about this. I know the title of this post gives the impression of excitement, but eight weeks is a loooong time. I know that many homeschooling parents are usually jumping for joy by this point, but I honestly look forward to doing school with my kids everyday. I really do.
One thing that will help with this at least a little bit is that I will still be doing about 5-10 minutes of math everyday with my non-teenagers because their new workbooks for next year are a little harder than they’re used to, so we’ve got some ground to cover. They did some complaining about it at first, but after I explained my reasoning, they were okay with it, and, honestly, how much is ten minutes out of an entire day?
Believe it or not, this week, I had one child at the dentist again- this time for a filling. Thankfully, we are now done until November, unless you count a July appointment at the orthodontist. Sigh.
This week has been a little more exciting than the last few, with various appointments and attending our very first homeschool group. 🙂 Seven years of homeschooling, and this is the first time I’ve ever gotten together with other homeschooling moms. Ever.
It was so exciting to actually talk about something I’m so passionate about with other people who feel the same way. The only time I get to “talk shop” any other time is here on this blog, so you can probably blame the abundance of posts in your emails or newsfeed on the fact that you’ve been my “online homeschool group” all this time. So thank you for reading and interacting with me. It means more than you know. 😀
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Oh, I almost forgot…one really cool thing that happened this week was that the author of a book that I just reviewed mentioned me in a tweet.
As you can see, I took a screenshot of it…and I may have told my kids that I was famous…
I do highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a good laugh. It truly was the funniest book I’ve ever read. Enough about me. Now, on with the show!
The Littles
We spent some more time on Madeline and used the illustrations to learn about symmetry. We also used our Shopkins as stand-ins for the “twelve little girls in two straight lines” and explored all of the different groupings of twelve. Whenever I involve my kids’ Shopkins, I know they’ll be paying attention! We also discussed personal hygiene and eating right, and how they can prevent illnesses like colds and the flu.
Other than Madeline, the biggest hit with my littles this week was a picture book called Except if…. For such a short, simple book, it had my kids cracking up almost the entire time I was reading it. Anything that can get my wiggly worms to sit still for story time is worth a mention on my blog!
The Big Kids
This week we finished up both Harry Potter and our research/reference unit. The kids alphabetized, typed up, and assembled their dictionaries, and we practiced using dictionary headings some more.
A friend who used to be a teacher at a Christian school and is now a homeschool evaluator stopped by at our house on Wednesday with two boxes filled with art supplies from her teaching days. My kids were absolutely thrilled and have spent the past two days crafting up all sorts of fun stuff. Now if only I knew where to put all this stuff…
The Teens
This week has been more of the same for the older kids. Dillon has still been spending a lot of time at the creek, and Arianna and Devin have still been spending the better part of their days in their room reading and watching Netflix.
Devin spent the day with Brendan, our oldest, again- this time browsing comic book stores. I love that they have so much in common and still spend so much time together.
Although my post reads “ten” homeschoolers, I do have eleven kids, but since Brendan is not homeschooling, I didn’t include him in the title. I would like to mention, though, that he had his college exams this week and scored a 96% on his sociology exam, so, yay for Brendan! 🙂
Arianna had the ‘privilege’ of attending the homeschool group with me to help watch the children who were there. I gave her the day off of school for helping. Wasn’t that nice of me?? (For those of you who are new to my blog, you can read a detailed description of our daily routine right here.)
Well, that’s about it. I’m anxious to see what next week brings without the structure of our normal school routine. We shall see…
What have you been up to this week? Is your school year almost through?
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There's No Place Like Home 