Weekly Wrap-Up: Just a Normal Week

Sometimes weeks are like that...they just smoothly pass by with hardly any effort. Well, there was some effort but it was all pointing in one direction which is nice. Moving forward always feels good and like you accomplished something.


History: Ancient History with Tapestry of Grace Year 1 is delightful, especially if you are Bible readers. They help you weave your Bible history and more secular history together. I love it when I can open the plans for the week and tell Mr. B, "Go get out your Bible." We talked about Rahab (love a good Bible heroine), Jericho, and Joshua this week...not as Bible stories but as history....real history about meaningful people and events that we can learn from and apply in our lives. He did lots of written narration this week using notebook pages. Mr. A is still working on Modern History and is pretty thick into WW2. We watched a speech on YouTube given by FDR and then discussed the role of the media in history.

Literature: Mr. A is reading The Crucible, The Chosen, and Robert Frost's poetry. Oh, this week we started The Merchant of Venice....what a great bit of Shakespeare! New quotes are being heard around the house so I know it is a hit with the boys too. ("Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.") Mr. B is reading The Iliad and we are taking the opportunity to talk about conflict. This is a great piece of literature for illustrating various kinds of conflict in a story: man vs. man, man vs. god, man vs. self. I find it easier to just keep chipping away at the literary terms and devices as the years and books go by. It does not need to be overwhelming.

Math: Deep Sigh......I am mighty glad that Mr. A is almost DONE with his math text and that will be the end of our math together. I am worn out.

Chemistry: Another failed demonstration this week, the fault of the materials we used but even in failure we learned a lot. I received two new resources from Amazon.com this week to breathe some life into our chemistry studies. I will share when I get it all pulled together.

LEGO NXT - Beginnings of a Self-Parking Car. Stay tuned.

Robotics and Videography and Baking: Robotics is chugging along and hopefully we will have something to share next week. Videography is a longer project on Ancient Egypt. Mr. B is still gathering data and images. Baking last week was popovers (forgot to take a photo) and this week is going to be pretzels using a different recipe than normal.

Creative Writing: We started reading Ray Bradbury's The Zen in the Art of Writing this week. What a great read! It has delivered far and above my expectations and Mr. B and I had a lively discussion about the section we read. I am feeling a little more confident about what we are doing now and I do promise to share some of the plans when we get a little further down the road. He did some amazing writing again this week so I think we are on the right track.

Photo Courtesy of Mr. A....Metal Hat with an Element Logo.

Welding Class: This project cracked me up! Mr. A had some free time and used some scrap metal to make this metal hat in class. This child has a great sense of humor and is gaining some skill at welding. I love to watch him be excited about things. 

I have finally kicked the horrible cough I had so we will be outdoors a bit more this coming week. I am hoping to strap on the old snowshoes and take a hike and the boys are itching to slide down the mountain on some white stuff as well.

And so ends another week for our family.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

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Creative Writing Resource


Literature Resources