The Homeschool Mother's Journal - 9, March 18, 2011

I hope you have all had a great week! 
*Editing*  I am also linking up this post to the Homeschool Highlights in MFW.  Please click on this button to read other entries!

Please check out the journals of other homeschooling moms at Sue's blog hop!

In my life this week:
 The other school in town are out on spring break this week, so I chose to have a more easy, relaxed week, too!  I got to some smaller organization projects that I had wanted to work on and completed our taxes.  I needed to bag up clothes that are too small for the children and make room in their closets for larger spring clothes.  They have grown so much this year! D and I got to have a date night with friends on Friday while the kids stayed with their grandparents!  We went out of town for sushi and then listened to some Blues music.

In our homeschool this week: 
We were able to do most of the unit study activities planned for us in Week 26 of Creation to the Greeks from My Father's World.  We were reading about Elijah and Elisha this week.  We reviewed telling time for math this week and took a break from our regular math, reading, spelling, and English.  We did do some more fun science activities from Genesis for Kids.  We learned about how our sense of smell affects the taste of food and how our two eyes work together.  B went to a pottery class and a drawing class at our local art center this week.  We also did a lesson about using shapes in art from our Artistic Pursuits Book One.

B's self portrait mask

B working on telling time with Math U See

Science experiment for visual field

Places we're going and people we're seeing:   
 We went on a field trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum on Tuesday with friends who attend public school and were on spring break this week!  This is our favorite museum and if you are ever near Indy, you really should stop by!  I wrote a whole post about it and you can find it on my blog at this link, Indianapolis Children's Museum Review, 2011.  My best friend and room-mate from college got to come for a visit, too!  We had not seen each other in person for about two years and so we talked ALL afternoon!  It was great fun to visit with my sister-in-Christ!  We talked so much that I didn't even take a picture of us together this time! Oops!

Our own "Wonder Woman"

J and his "dream" car, the Bumblebee Chevy Camaro

My favorite thing this week:  
We visited with my husand's family when his mother and step-dad flew back from seeing her other son's family in Florida. We all celebrated by going out to eat at a Japanese steak house!

 
What's working/not working for us: 
It was unusual, but good for me to allow for more free time and fun things this week.  I think we all were getting spring fever and had a better attitude!  Doing only certain subjects this week gave us more time for playing outside on a couple of days when it actually got up to 70 degrees and they played with the neighbor child while she was out of school on spring break and got some great exercise on her trampoline!


Homeschool Questions/Thoughts I Have:   
Do any of you attend a Classical Conversations community?  Do any of you do the Essentials in addition to the Foundations and what do you think about it?

We are looking into a new Classical Conversations community that is going to begin next fall in a nearby town (about 30 min. away).  All of the other CC groups in our state are an hour or more away.  I love our My Father's World curriculum, but I am considering this CC group especially because of the grammar and writing instruction in the Essentials course.  I don't know if my son is ready, but they use the Institute for Excellence in Writing curriculum and it is recommended by Susan Barton for students who have completed Level 4 of her Barton Reading and Spelling System.  My son is now working through Level 5 of Barton and I wonder if having the structure of CC and another tutor in this area would motivate and help him.  We are going to visit an open house next Thursday and I think that will help me decide.  One of my main concerns is doing "too much", but I also feel like being in 5th grade next year and getting farther along in the Barton program means that we need to "step up" his writing, as he is able.