Weekly Report: Thankful Trees & Flat Adventures

weekly report
This is one of those weeks where I know we did do a lot, but absolutely none of it immediately comes to mind as I sit here with a few minutes to write a blog post about it!

Kathryn is always delighted when our God’s World News magazine comes in the mail. She usually devours it the first day it arrives, and it makes for some interesting conversations as she tells me about the current events she has read. The thinking games and puzzles are always fun, too.

GWN

Math with Teaching Textbooks is still going fabulously. Again, it’s still mostly review, and I expect most of it will be for at least a couple of months, but that is completely okay by me. She’ll just have a good grasp on things, and if she no longer hates math, it will be so much easier to learn new and challenging things. Besides, I often wonder why we tend to hurry and push kids into very advanced math at a young age. A while back, Barb wrote a great post on the subject, and I wholeheartedly agree.

I’m rather amazed to say that we are actually on schedule for our history readings. Kathryn was sad to see Courage Undaunted come to an end, since that is one she has really been enjoying. We’re working on finishing up our American Revolution lapbook so we can move into the 19th Century lapbook to eventually catch up to where we are in our readings! As it is right now, doing lapbook projects from a different time period than we’re reading about doesn’t seem to be confusing Kathryn, and the lapbook is actually serving as review as we continue on with our learning.

Today we made our 2011 Thankful Tree, and began cutting out leaves for it. We opted for simple leaves this year, similar in shape to dogwood tree leaves, because cutting out maple-shaped leaves involves a great deal of time and hand cramping. 😉

cutting leaves

I’m disappointed in how we’ve fizzled out again on nature studies. To be fair to myself, we do make a point of noticing nature on a daily basis: identifying birds in the yard; watching a crow chase a chipmunk; talking about the leaves changing color; noticing weather changes and clouds, and so on. But we have slacked off on the more formal nature studies I’d like to be doing weekly. Lacy the WonderDog, however, is very intent on one nature study subject in particular: the chipmunks that live in the yard and have a hole in the backyard. She has watched a chipmunk run into that hole many times, and sticks her nose in there looking for them EVERY time she’s in the yard!

Lacy studies chipmunk

Kathryn only has about a month left for this session of her enrichment classes. One class continues on through next semester, but for the others, she’s having a hard time decided which ones she wants to try to sign up for. There are just too many great options, but she knows they are not cheap, so we are limited in how many she can do.

What else this week? Oh, yes! Flat Jamie is traveling with Carey this week at Relevant, and instagraming her adventures. I’ve been greatly amused and enjoying the trip! 😉

FlatJamie

I’m linking up today with Kris’ Weekly Wrap-Up at WUHS; come join the fun!