Weekly Wrap-Up: Getting into a Groove
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Happy Friday! We’ve completed our first full week of school and it’s gone really great! We’ve been trying something new with our schedule and I think that has helped tremendously. Not only that, but I wound up with an unexpected evening alone. How’s that for a great week?
Monday Brianna was supposed to ride with a friend to a volleyball meeting and dinner with the volleyball team. When I called to make arrangements, she was invited to spend the night with her friend.
In keeping with my commitment to remember that it’s still summer, I decided that she could make up her schoolwork from Tuesday later in the week and go with her friend. Of course, I later found out that they were going to be bringing her home around 10:30 Tuesday morning. Since we don’t start school until 11:00, making up schoolwork was a non-issue.
When Megan heard that Brianna was spending the night with her friend, she asked if she and Josh could spend the night with Brian’s parents. I told her that was between her and her grandparents, knowing that, if the kids spent the night, their grandparents would bring them home early, too, and it wouldn’t affect school.
So, they got to go to their grandparent’s house, Brianna went to her friend’s house and Brian had a ballgame. I got nearly four hours all to myself Monday night! I got so much done!
Tuesday was a little rough since everyone was functioning on too little sleep – including me since I stayed up late enjoying the peace and quiet – but it wasn’t too bad.
So, our new schedule. When I set up Switched-on-Schoolhouse for Brianna, I asked her if she’d like to split up history and science, not doing both every day, since SOS allows you to set up subjects that way. I thought it might help to just be able to focus on one at a time, even though it would mean more work in the one subject on a given day.
She was all for that, so we set it up so that she does history on Monday and Wednesday, science on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and has Friday as either a light school day or a catch-up day, as needed. She’s really enjoying that.
I decided to do the same thing for Josh and Megan, thinking that having more time to concentrate on reading or projects might help. It’s working great!
We do our Bible lesson/devotion as a family in the morning. Then, I work with Josh and Megan on Easy Grammar and Daily Grams before we stop for lunch. If they have time to do their math (Teaching Textbooks) while I’m fixing lunch, they do that. Otherwise, they do math at the end of the day.
After lunch, we either work on writing or do an All About Spelling lesson, doing writing M-W-F and spelling T-Th. Then, we either do history or science. Once we finish that, I give Megan silent reading time in her room (Yay! Finally! An independent, voracious reader!) while I work with Josh, one-on-one.
It’s been working out great! I feel like we’re getting plenty done, but we’re not stressed trying to fit everything in each afternoon. We wound up using today as a catch-up day since we had to end school early yesterday to deal with some car trouble issues. (Having your AC go out in August in the South is not cool…literally or figuratively.)
Since our catch-up was two pretty fun projects, it still was a nice, non-stressful day. First, we did a fun science experiment, from Real Science Odyssey, looking at water as a solid, a liquid, and a gas.
First, we filled a glass with ice water, so we could observe the condensation forming on the side of the glass.
Then, we looked at ice cubes to observe water in its solid form. Next, we melted some ice cubes in a pan, brought the water to a boil and observed steam.
Finally, we held a pan of ice over the steam and watched the condensation form on the bottom of the pan. Very cool stuff.
Then, we talked about how the early explorers used maps. We read Me On a Map, which is a pretty simplistic little book, but it illustrated maps and their uses very well. After reading the book, Josh and Megan each drew a map of their rooms.
I feel great about the week. I hope yours went great, too! If you haven’t started yet, know that I’m wishing you a great start to your new school year.
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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.
We are committed to the fact that it is still summer, too!
That switched up switched on school house schedule sounds nice – the beauty of homeschooling! I've been keeping my eyes peeled for Me on the Map – it's one on our Tapestry list for this unit 🙂
I'm so glad it's going well! Ours has started out wonderfully as well. I also love the "Me on the Map" book and chuckled that losing AC is not cool! 😉 https://homestead-for-sale.blogspot.com/
Looks like an awesome week! We are not quite in a groove yet, but got our first week under our belts so I'm not complaining! And Ken's a/c in his car hasn't worked all summer, so he totally feels your pain — or sweat, as the case may be. 😉
We got our AC fixed, at least temporarily, yesterday. I am so thankful! I feel for Ken. It's miserable with no air.
Great week! I love the water experiments – will have to do those with my kiddos.
Last year I took your Easy Grammar suggestion and I am so glad I did. My daughter loves it – thank you!
I am happy your year has started so well!
I'm so glad to hear that you're enjoying Easy Grammar. It's our favorite!
Your week was most certainly better than ours. That map book looks great. I'm going to have to check it out.
I added a link to my post, it isn't a wrap-up post, but thought it would be ok. I wrote about what I have learned over the last five years of homeschooling 🙂
That looks like a fun week, well, except for the part where the AC went out. Bleh. We've been falling into a do-it-in-chunks groove too, and I was amazed at how much we got done when I started writing it all down.