Weekly Wrap Up: The Week We Went to the Shore and the Art Museum

We had a fun week this week.  It was pretty quiet and we stuck to home quite a bit.  We're winding down our summer activities and planning our fall.... seriously I think Sept. is already chuck full!  But that's how we like to see our fall start.  Once all the school kids go back to school we typically spend a month or so going on field trips and meeting back up with all of our homeschooling friends.

Math:  Ian and Evan both finished up their summer mini workbooks this week and will get to take a week off from math next week.  Alec will be finishing up his mini workbook on Monday or Tuesday and then he too can take a week or so off.  We won't be starting our new workbooks for the school year until October but I have some fun mini lessons planned for Sept.

Science: We read Big Blue Whale together learning all about blue whales.  Alec read Tree of Life, Watching Giraffes in Africa, and Orangutangka.  We spent a weekday in Jamestown searching for sea life and exploring the shoreline. Evan, Alec and I played a fun card game called Ion learning all about bonds and compounds.  Evan read through his Ranger Rick magazine learning about meerkats, signs of fall and reptiles.

Reading:  Evan read Leap Back home to Me, started reading Flat Stanley Flat Again, and a few chapters in Henry and Mudge Take the Big Test.  Ian read the Canary Caper, read a few chapters in George's Marvelous Medicine and then began reading The Goose's Gold.  Alec read most of  The Five Kingdoms Sky Raiders and read Song of the Poison Dragon in it's entirety.   We are on our last Son of Neptune disk and we've started reading The Emperor's Code.

Spelling/writing:  The older two boys are only 15 pages away from finishing up their Spelling Time workbooks and so they've been working in them every day rather than once  a week.  They both want to finish them up before our new school year starts.  We're looking to switch over our tv/internet/phone provider and the older two boys spent an afternoon working together to copy everything down from our DVR so they won't miss any programming if we switch to another company.  That is the most I've ever seen them write in one sitting!  They copied down the name of the show and what station it's on.

History:  At one point or another all three boys have read The Deep Dish on Pizza learning about the history of pizza and where it came from.

Art:  We spent an afternoon at the art museum wandering around checking out all the sculptures, paintings, and weaponry.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much my boys enjoyed the day.  I'll write more on this later; there were so many wonderful surprises at this museum and we'll definitely be back again!

Socialization:  Alec had a friend sleepover one night this week and Ian had a friend over to play so at one point this week I had 5 boys running through the house shooting each other with Nerf guns.  They also spent a few days playing with their cousins and visiting with their grandmother/ grandparents.

Life Skills:  The boys helped clean the house this week as well as cooking some of their own meals and doing some laundry.  Ian went to mow lawns over the weekend squeezing in a job between rain storms.