Weekly Wrap-Up: First Week of School 2011
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Happy Friday! We have successfully made it through our first week of the 2011-2012 school year! Woo hoo!
Actually, it’s been a really good week. I do have one apology upfront, though. I had such good intentions for making lots of pictures this week and I didn’t make the first one. I just completely forgot. I have got to get back to taking photos regularly. It’s something I enjoy and it makes blog posts so much prettier.
We started Monday off with a complete surprise for the kids. I woke them up as normal, had them do their household chores, and we sat down for our Bible lesson. When we finished, I said, “Okay, now y’all can go get your bathing suits on because we’re going swimming!”
They were so excited! I decided to take some of my own advice and start the year off fun. As I said in my post at The Homeschool Classroom, it was high time homeschooling started dating my family again.
We stopped and got some pizza – lots of pizza! – and headed to a friend’s house for a pizza and pool party. Dad even got to join us. It was a great day and a wonderful back-to-school treat for the kids.
After we got back home, Megan and I made a run to the library, which started something amazing. Apparently, something has finally clicked with Megan and she loves to read! I always said I deserved at least one reader and apparently God agreed.
Now, the book she’s so engrossed in this week is total brain candy, but I’m okay with that. In addition to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, she’s also been reading – during school reading time – a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. While it is apparently not as much fun as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, she has told me some interesting facts about Mrs. Wilder.
It’s really exciting because not only is she enjoying reading for pleasure, but now I can start encouraging more reading to learn, an independent learning skill that will allow her to follow her own interests and learn more than I could teach her on my own.
I had a couple of unexpected blessings this week that just blew me away. The first was an unexpected monetary gift from a friend that will allow me to purchase a ticket to the Savvy Blogging Summit today – hopefully if they don’t sell out before I can get mine.
I’ve wanted to go to SBS for the last two years, but the fact that it was held in Colorado made it cost-prohibitive for me. Next year it’s being held in Atlanta, which makes it totally doable for this Georgia girl. I can’t wait! And I am so thankful for this unexpected blessing that will allow me to go.
The second was, I won a $100 Lowe’s gift card and Debra Bell’s new homeschool planner from Apologia World! I’m hoping that Lowe’s might let me use the gift card to pay on our refrigerator that we had to purchase unexpectedly when our old one died a few months ago. If they don’t, I’m sure we’ll find something we can use.
The school week ended a little earlier than I’d planned this week since Josh got an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up. He was invited to go to “Survivor Camp” with some friends through their church.
They could only bring a few things such as a Bible, a flashlight, ONE change of clothes, toothpaste, a water bottle, and one personal item. They were told that they’d be eating rice and drinking water, but they could earn additional food items and a shower. Yeah, right. Like any of those boys are going to work hard to earn a shower.
Josh has talked about nothing else all week. He’s imagining some Survivor Man / Dual Survivor /Man vs. Wild weekend where he’s building a fire out of nothing but a couple of twigs and trapping hapless animals and roasting them over said fire.
I’m kind of thinking that it won’t really be like that, but I have heard that the different tribes are going to have to build a raft out of bamboo and float it across a body of water. It should be a great time for him…and totally educational.
That brings us to today. I plan on using the extra time that I have since school got cut short this week to work on the lesson plans that my computer ate. I had three weeks done and they disappeared. Brian and I both looked for them forever.
I’m hoping it will be easier to write them out the second time since 1) I kind of have an idea of what I had planned to do and 2) now that we’ve actually done a week of school, I have a better idea of how our days are going to flow this year.
All in all, it was a great first week, which was very nice considering how burnt out I was still feeling up until about a week before school started.
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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
I am a big fan of both the books your daughter picked to read =)
LOL I had to LOL at the "earn showers" part. I have a 12 1/2 year old boy who just got back from Boy Scout camping. He took ONE shower ALL week! Guess what he did AS SOON AS he got home? LOL
Sounds like a fun, flexible, productive week! The Survivor thing sounds awesome! And how nice on the gift card and SBS!
I'm glad your first week went well… it was our first here, too. Looking forward to linking up more often with the weekly wrap-up now that school has started!
The Survivor camp sounds like a great opportunity! 🙂
I am glad your computer 'only' ate 3 weeks, I hate losing work, so discouraging.
Glad you had a good first week! The Survivor Camp sounds like a lot of fun, right up a boys alley :). Hope your plans are easier to write the second time around.
My boy LOVES Diary of a Wimpy Kid! That said…I must caution you…he completely relates w/the main character (who is not always the greatest friend and is usually only thinking of himself) and we have seen our own boy's inward heart issues come to the surface through the reading of this book. I am NOT a censor-books kind of gal so we have taken LOTS of opportunities to address these heart issues and take them to the Bible! 🙂
I'm going to be anxiously awaiting whether you are able to grab a SBS ticket. I forgot that I was going to be out of the house briefly right at noon anyway, so as soon as I get home, I hope there is an email from you or a post on IBN saying that you got a ticket. 😉
Pool and pizza party on the first day back-lots of cool points for you:) I'm glad that you had a great first week back!
Now that was surely a way to start off the school year – pool and pizza!! A winner of a week all around – SBsummit provision, Lowe's gift card – congrats!
Good food for thought. I'll keep an eye out for that. I love that you choose to address those issues by seeking out God's authority on them, rather than just forbidding them out-of-hand. That's such a great way to teach kids to have their own discernment. Sometimes that's hard to do because it takes more parenting effort than simply forbidding the book (or movie or TV show). Kudos to you!
Me, too! It definitely could have been worse.
I made my boy take a shower yesterday morning before he left so that he would at least be as fresh as possible when he got home. lol
Oh my 8yo would love to go to survivor camp, he loves that stuff. Hope your son has a great time.
Congrats on all the prizes you won!!
yay for taking your own advice…I am thinking of doing a Tea party our first day back!
Yay for your girl starting to enjoy reading. Laura Ingalls Wilder was my favorite author as a kid!! I love that my girls love to read…it makes so many other things so much easier 🙂
That Survivor Camp sounds like an interesting time!
Just found out I'm going to Savvy Blogging Summit! So excited! I look forward to seeing you there.
Wow, sounds like you had such a fun week! And how awesome are those gifts. I SO want to go to SBS, but the only way I could get there would be through a sponsorship. What a blessing for you!
will you check out what I'm doing wrong? My post is linked directly- and it won't let me "relink" because it says I'm already on the list- yet it isn't showing up- my post is most definately a "wrap up from our week " and I even added "weekly wrap up" to the title- HELP! 🙂
You're link #25. Not sure what the problem is.
Ack on the lesson plans!!! I would cry. I have my whole year entered in HST.
My week had some glitches too. I'm not entirely certainly they can be fixed without a major change but I guess time will tell.
Sounds like a great first week. Be sure to let us know how Survivor Camp went next week.
Thanks for your encouragement and motivation! I loved the post on ways to start the school year, and am seriously pumped about Debra Bell's planner! Isn't it great when the kids LOVE to read?? 🙂 https://homestead-for-sale.blogspot.com
I'm envious of your newfound reader! How old is Megan? I'm praying for both my children to develop at least a "like" for reading sometime soon! I think more hope lies with the second born over the first. But ya never know!
That camp sounds like a fabulous experience. I wanna go!
Glad you had a great week. I'm a little anxious to start, but not quite ready yet.
She'll be 10 in September. I had just about given up home on having an avid reader like myself, so I'm really excited to see her reading ability and enjoyment take off like it has!
He got back today. He was exhausted (he seriously had purple bags under his eyes), filthy, hungry (they really did make them eat rice and beans all weekend), covered in bug bits, and sporting a gash on his foot that we're watching very closely, but he had a GREAT time.
I think I might die if I lost an entire year's worth of plans. I was able to get my 3 weeks done in a little less than an hour Friday night, so it wasn't too bad.