Weekly Wrap Up: Learning About Italy
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It’s been another busy week and I’m starting to wonder how I find time to even breathe. It seems like I’m barely keeping my head above water and I’m wondering if I need to make some adjustments to our schedule…or if I’m still simply adjusting from enjoying so much free time over the summer. Seriously, I enjoyed it as much as the kids did. Despite all the busyness, though, we’ve had some fun learning about Italy for Around the World Day.
We’ve been reading the book The Other Mrs. Giaconda, by E. L. Konigsburg, about one of the most famous Italians, Leonardo da Vinci. This just happens to be who we’re studying for our art co-op, so that’s been really cool. The book can be a little over the younger kids’ head, but it has some funny parts that even they get, so we’re all enjoying it, so far.
One of the first things that we learned about da Vinci is how he kept notebooks in which he wrote backwards, in mirror image. We enjoyed trying that, which is really much harder than it sounds. The kids thought it was really neat to look at the dry erase board, on which we’d written their names in mirror image, through a mirror and see that they looked correct in the mirror.
Later in the week, we colored the Italian flag, the outline for which I, with my extreme artistic ability, drew myself. If you can look past the kids’ coloring, you’ll be able to see the awesome talent to which I refer:
(Oops! I just noticed that I put two of the flags on the board upside down. The green part is supposed to be first. My apologies to my Italian friends…yeah, I don’t really have any Italian friends.) Yes, drawing all those straight lines with a ruler was very taxing (and, yes, I did just draw one flag and make copies).
We’ve been reading our way through Welcome to My Country: Italy, and, so far, have learned about the climate, the animal life (there is, surprisingly, not much), the history, the government and the economy. Some of our activities have included designing a page on Italy’s industries (a task which I usually do, but handed over to Brianna this year..and she did a fantastic job with the layout), looking up Italy’s timezone and comparing to ours, and looking up the value of the traditional monetary unit of Italy, the lira, and comparing it to the dollar.
We’ve also practiced counting and welcoming people to our country in Italian. Brianna designed a cover for our “Italy” notebook. I think she did a fantastic job! Especially with the outline map, which she freehanded:
In addition to all our studies about Italy, we made a rain stick for Megan’s music class and had our co-op on Wednesday. The thing I’m most excited about doing this weekend is…nothing! We have nothing planned and there is a football game on today that Brian wants to see, so I know he won’t want to go anywhere. I just want to sit around and be lazy. I’m not going to start any cleaning projects. I may write out some lesson plans and grade papers and I’m sure I’ll blog a bit, which is exactly what I want to do.
And, I’d love to spend some time with my kids…if they’ll agree to coloring or playing video games or some other something that involves very little activity on my part. How sad is that?
How did your school week go? What plans do you have in store for this weekend?
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.