Our Homeschool Journal - August 28, 2011

Please join me in this week's blog hops of Hip Homeschool Hop and The Homeschool Mother's Journal. I am sharing Sue's quote and super cute, superpower button at the bottom of this post!

 

In my life this week…
We got our new air conditioner installed on Tuesday and Wednesday! Praise God that we can have normal temperatures inside of our house again.  The week before, we had windows open and fans on all night, so it would cool down by morning, but in the afternoon it would warm up and stay at around 85 degrees in our house all evening! Yuk!  We weren't planning on replacing the AC and heating furnace at the same time we re-modeled our basement either. Oh well, we won't have to do either one again for a long time!  I really don't know how people made it in the "olden days" of long prairie skirts and no AC!

In our homeschool this week…
We did more work on academics, starting up our reading and spelling this week.  So right now we have Bible, handwriting, math, English, reading, and spelling going.  We are also doing a short study on castles, knights, and the middle ages as a special request from my son, J.  He did not want to skip the "cool stuff" before jumping ahead to our studies of American history this year in Classical Conversations.  Since we have staggered our work and not started all areas of work at once, we have time to do this before we begin CC in September!    We read two great books from the library, "Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Medieval Castle" and part of "DK EyeWonder: Castle and Knight".  The children also built a small castle and enjoyed playing with it this week!

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
My husband had the ingenious idea of taking a TV out of it's cabinet on our sun porch, where it's so sunny that you can't see the screen well anyway, and building shelves to go inside of the cabinet for school storage!  Here are the fabulous results!

The unassuming cabinet

Voila! School storage extraordinaire!

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
This may sound crazy to some of you, but we re-lived the old tradition of "cruising" here in my hometown last Saturday night.  A post on a Facebook page about growing up in this county created a whole event with hundreds of people jamming the streets of this small town on a beautiful August evening.  When I was in high school we went "cruising" and my parents and generations of others before me called it "scooping the loop", which is what this event was fondly named!  My daughter even created her own "80's" costume for our special ride and my hubby washed off the convertible!  My daughter and I had a great time, while my son and hubby thought it was a big traffic jam.  Then I got to take two girlfriends for a spin again after my family went home!  Life in a small town, full of memories is a treat!  Here is the link to the story, "Scooping the Loop"
 and here is the photo of my little 80's cruiser.

B has obviously learned about 80's fashion from Full House re-runs!

I am inspired by…

 My favorite thing this week was…
The kids found small whiteboards to put on their bedroom doors and we started leaving messages to each other.  Here was my conversation with my sweet daughter.
Me: Mommy loves you!  B: I love you!  Me: I love you more!  B: I love you most!

This was the white board conversation with my precious son.
Me: Mommy loves you!  J: Me to

I’m grateful for…
Getting our basement back! We are still finishing up little things now, but the big things are done in our basement project! It feels more "homey" down there than it has since our last incident with water on the basement floor in April and my classroom is back and functioning again!  I was surprised at how it feels more finished with carpet on the floor and stairs.  It will be nice when it is all done and we don't have to work on a project for every spare minute, but I am so grateful for what we have completed!  Here is a sneak peak:

Our school area is shaping up!

I’m praying for…
Family and friends who live in the East Coast and are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.
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A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
Leaping tall stacks of school books with a single bound….