Monday Morning Coffee Break: November 3, 2008

This weekend seemed so rushed to me. We slept in a bit on Saturday...not really as late as I'd planned, but by the time we laid in bed, watching TV and reading, it was later than I'd realized. After breakfast, I had to make my Publix run -- it couldn't be put off; I was out of sugar and no sugar means no tea! Gasp!

After I got home, most of the remainder of the day was spent on cleaning house and trying to catch up the laundry. Before I knew it, the day was gone.

Sunday, we were supposed to visit a church with some friends. Here's a helpful tip: if you're going to visit a church with friends, make sure you actually know where the church is before you leave.

We drove down the road where we thought the church was. No church. I thought it might be further down that same road, so I kept driving. It turns out that's a really long road that goes out in the middle of nowhere. On the way back down the really long road, I had to stop for a deer in the middle of the road! Being relatively urban kind of folks, this sort of thing really impresses us. Imagine our delight, a few feet later, when we saw several more deer in a field...and then another one in the parking lot of a business!

So, even though we never found the church, we had an enjoyable morning and enjoyed the beauty of God's creation. We did wind up visiting another church with a later starting time. It seemed a waste to get up and get ready and not go to church.

Brianna is over her sickness from last week, after spending two days in the bed and no one else caught the bug, so we anticipate an uneventful week of school this week. We'll be studying Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, so that should be interesting. In preparing for this week, I've already learning something that I didn't know: Cleopatra wasn't Egyptian! She was a Macedonian Greek, descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals.

We'll also be studying the water cycle as we begin the last unit in Christian Kids Explore Biology. I didn't realize that we were so close to the end. I guess that means I need to get out my copy of Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space and take it to the copy shop to get the binding cut and have it three-hole drilled.

I plan to do a couple of simple, but hopefully interesting, experiments this week on condensation and evaporation. I also hope that we can actually go on a nature walk. No, I haven't completely given up on nature walks yet.

I plan to have the younger kids continue working through Phonics Pathways, though I think that this week I'll have them do 10 minutes on that and spend another 10 minutes reading from a book of their choosing. We'll see how that goes.

Brianna will be playing a bit of catch up from last week and will begin working on her first official book report. While Nim will be learning about the letter G and the number 7. I have a cute giraffe puppet craft and a gingerbread man coloring page for her to do (and an extra for Megan!). If I get industrious enough, I may consider making gingerbread man cookies on Friday. I'm not holding my breath on that one, though. I don't think anyone even likes them, so it seems pointless even for an "extension" activity.

I'm debating on whether or not to take the kids with me to the polls on Tuesday. In a way, I'd like for them to see how the election process works, but, I always feel totally, uncomfortably self-conscious going to the polls myself (yes, I know I'm weird), so I'm not sure that drawing even more attention to myself ranks especially high on my list of things to do Tuesday. And, knowing my kids, they wouldn't be terribly impressed anyway. We will be watching the returns, though. One nice thing about homeschooling is that they can stay up late for stuff like that.

What have you got on tap for this week? Will you be taking your kids to the polls?

photo by cripic