Weekly Wrap-Up: The Last Friday Edition
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Was there a full moon last night or one coming up tonight? Just wondering because I have two kids that are about to make me not need a hair cut. I mean, seriously, if I pull all my hair out, there won’t be any left to cut. That being said, thank goodness it’s Friday and we’re done for the day! Today was our last Friday…only three more days of school!!
I don’t have any fun pictures this week or really any fun things we did this week. It was more or less a week of wrapping up. We did talk about the Black Plague, which I found morbidly fascinating. Did you know that during the Black Plague people actually put the dead bodies of plague victims in catapults and launched them over the walls of a town that was protecting people suspected of bringing the plague to the town of the body-launchers? The people in the city into which the bodies were launched caught the plague and many of them died.
See? Morbidly fascinating.
We’ve also been working on finishing our weather unit. We’ve continued to talk about and identify cloud types (we’re getting pretty good at it) and we’ve talked about the different types of precipitation. We’ve had some good practice with the clouds this week since we’ve had sunny days with puffy (cumulus) and wispy (cirrus) clouds and rainy days with rain clouds (stratonimbus) and all combinations in between.
Wednesday Brianna took a Red Cross babysitting course. She is now a Red Cross-certified babysitter and is also certified in infant and child CPR and basic first aid. Very cool! While she was doing her class (all day…8:30-5:30), the younger kids and I met some friends for lunch and a play date. It was much-neeed socialization for all involving, including me.
Reading is going along smoothly. I was very impressed with both Josh and Megan’s reading today when I listened to them. It occured to me that at the beginning of the year neither of them would have been able to read what they read today, let alone as fluently as they read it. So, although progress is sometimes slow, there is noticeable progress.
Brianna has been working really well independently. I’ve really been giving a lot of consideration to next year where she’s concerned. She’ll be in eight grade, so it will be a “practice” year for high school for us. I know she’s at a point where her workload needs to increase. I’d also like to see her personal responsibly increase. You know, so that she’s finishing everything without me asking, “Did you do this, this and this” and having her reply, “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.”
It should be interesting.
We also did the last state that we’ll do this school year for our “Fifty State Fridays” (though we may do some over the summer). Today was Idaho, home of the potato. It’s also the state in which Appaloosa horses were first bred as war horses for the Nez Perce indians, where the first chair lift was installed, and where Philo Farnsworth, inventor of the television, lived.
Finally, I’m trying to decide if I want to continue the Weekly Wrap-Up through the summer. I know a lot of people school year ’round and I know that we often do fun, interesting things during the summer even though we take off, but I wasn’t sure if there would be enough interest in regular participation when the sun is shining and the weather is nice. So, I’d love to hear what you think. Leave me a comment and let me know if you’d like to see the Wrap-Up go through the summer or take a break. Either way, I probably won’t get it posted next Friday. We’ve got something going on and my computer time and access will be extremely limited.
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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’ve got 2 or 3 more Fridays to wrap up. 14 days of school to go.
Kris,
I haven’t been posting or leaving comments, but I have been reading.
I think it would be nice to continue the Wrap Ups to see how other homeschoolers enjoy their summer, school year round and intertwine education with fun, kwim?
I love morbidly fascinating stuff too, as long as it happened long ago and won’t happen to me 🙂
I love the idea of being a Red Cross certified babysitter. Way to go!
I’d love to continue this meme through the summer. I may not be able to particpate every week but I’d like to see how others spend their summer and how they incorporate learning into everyday life,. Homeschoolers school all year round no matter what 🙂
Can’t believe y’all are almost done!!! Congrats!
Morbidly fascinating, YES! =) It’s great seeing all the progress isn’t it? I love Weekly Wrap-up. Sorry I haven’t been able to participate lately. You’re right about things getting so busy!! If there is a Weekly Wrap-up I’ll try to play along…or I’ll play when it starts up again. =) (Maybe my vote shouldn’t count since I haven’t done it for the past several weeks!) We plan to school through the summer.
I have enjoyed the wrap-ups, even when I can’t participate. School years do vary so much, and even when not in regular school activities, families often have various events to share about.
Don’t know if it is an option, but maybe you could run it every other week during summer months, or even once a month and people could share some of their highlights from that month.
Just some thoughts. Thanks for hosting this, whichever way you decide to handle the summer,
Erin
We have 2 more weeks. I think that continuing through the summer would get good, it is always fun to see what other families are doing. Maybe even if you don’t have a lengthy post each week, you leave the “home” post, so to speak for whoever wants to leave their wrap-up. I’m with Cheryl, we might not be able to participate every week, but maybe a short note to check in?
So that’s why I only get a snippet of your posts- partial feed! Well a whole feed is nice, but I agree about having people come to your blog. I usually do, since I can’t read the whole post in the reader. I voted for a full feed.
I love your posts please keep them coming as you see fit. We will try the solar ovens later this summer
Your study on the Black Plague sounds morbidly interesting!
We have the rest of this week, then we switch into more fun learning.
Your choice on the weekly wrap-up. I’ll try to contribute if you continue it. Maybe you could just put up something small and a linky? Whatever works for you – it is your blog and your time!
I’m okay with continuing the wrap-ups.. not sure how much I will have to report though.
And yes, morbidly fascinating… and thanks for reminding me to look at the bigger picture when it comes to progress. Sometimes we seem to be moving at a snails pace but we are making progress.
I would like to see the Weekly Wrap-Up continue over the summer. We are taking a break over the summer but I plan (hope) to do some fun art projects and science activities. If we do, I’ll be posting about them. I would love to hear about your weeks over the summer!
Samantha
I’d love to see the Weekly Wrap-ups continue. I enjoy seeing what others are up to, even if it’s not officially “school”.
Yeah, the black plague is morbidly fascinating. There are those who think that the Black Death may not have actually been “plague” (i.e. yersinia pestis) but some kind of hemorrhagic fever. That’s probably of more interest to someone like me, but I think it’s fascinating because it suggests that it might not have been transmitted by rodents as thought. My kids roll their eyes when I bring up crazy stuff like this.
Okay, that was kind of grossly fascinating. We will go year round, but will just slow down in the summer. So no last days for us lol! Although, I do think we will take a short break just for the fun of it. jack will enjoy it!
Have you read The Wicked History of the World or any of the Horrible History books? They are SO awesome! Love them for morbidly fascinating facts.