Dec 16 Weekly Wrap-up

How's your past week been?  Most homeschoolers here have been finishing up for the year, but we're going to push through a few more days next week before calling it quits for the Summer break.

In our homeschool ...

Maestro has made further roads into learning about physics.  He began working through Newton's laws and will continue to finish this module (10, from Apologia Physical Science) in the next week.

Mariposa's science has introduced her to nutritional labels.  Her interest in cooking will help encourage her through as we learn about reading the labels on foods, but she was rather overwhelmed with the terminology of carbohydrates, proteins and fats as each was broken down into different groups.

History is still taking us through the early American times.  We also found that our library stocked the Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman dvd series, so we've been watching some of those.  I think they'll tie in nicely to what we've been learning and the children can enjoy viewing some episodes during our break.

Maestro's been learning how to prove triangles in Geometry, while Mariposa learned a little about Pythagorus in Mathematicians are People Too.  I have a copy of What's the Angle Pythagorus, so we'll read that next week, along with some paper craft to make some 3D shapes.

Socially speaking ...

We had LOTS of things happening here this week!  As I mentioned in opening this post, many homeschoolers were finishing up at the end of this week, so we had a break up party at rollerblading on Friday afternoon.

Earlier in the week, Mariposa's friend came to stay the night, and then both girls went to horseriding on Tuesday morning.  We're going to have a repeat of that again next week.  It's been lovely to see their friendship developing and shared interests encouraged. :)

Maestro has also been planning his summer break outings with his friends.  I know one of the ideas on his list includes a trip to the cinema to see "The Hobbit" when it's released.

Then today we had a relaxing lunch with friends, with a pleasant visit to a park for a walk around the lake, play on the equipment and shooting a few basketball hoops.

At home ... 

Our back sliding door has arrived!  It was installed on Tuesday morning.  We need to stain it, but it was raining during the evenings this week and we haven't yet done it.  It's not going to be a big job, so should be finished during the week if the weather stays fine for a few days.  After that job's complete, we need to make the back steps, then the pergola can go up.

If you remember, we had to tighten our budget even further to help save up for this sliding door.  It's been going so well!  It's a bit of a pain having to write down absolutely EVERYTHING we spend and check against our weekly allowance, but the diligence is paying off.  I'm absolutely amazed at how well we can manage, and how creative we can be in the kitchen when we just have to make do.  The key has been that little envelope I keep in my purse, where I write down all the grocery spending for the week and only purchase within our limit.  We even had a couple of dollars spare this week!

We also have a broody hen; the first one for this season.  We were kindly given a dozen fertile eggs (from the horseriding instructor), so we've put eight in the nest.  We daren't put all of them under the hen as they'll be too many and we'll probably have breakages.  But we're excited! New chicks are a possibility in early January.

AND .. we found that a little nest has been occupied by a thrush.  She's been there before in October, when we first spotted her flying in to the tree to feed her three chicks. They were already quite grown when we discovered them the first time.  Mama thrush is obviously comfortable there, so has gone back for a second clutch this year.  No photos of her now, as she's nestled down tight, but we'll keep a careful eye out without disturbing her too much.  Here's a photo of October's chicks, only a couple of days before they flew the nest.

I hope you all have a great week this week!!

Until next post,

Catherine

Read more Weekly Wrap-Ups at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
and It's a Wrap at Hammock Tracks