Weekly Wrap-Up: Fresh New Year

This was our first week back after our long three week break. It went much more smoothly than I anticipated. Both boys were ready to get back to work...even if I was still dreaming of one more week. :)

We are finishing up Week 17 today so next week is our "exams" week...Charlotte Mason style. It doesn't mean too much this time around but I will be doing notebook checks and making sure all assignments are done and filed.

Mr. A finished his high school math courses before the break so he is "math free" this term. Mr. B is still plugging away on his text.

Chemistry was totally revamped over the break. I have sweated over this course and it finally clicked into perspective after much thought and debate with myself. I am striving to stick to my goals and not get overwhelmed with everything we could be doing. This was a great week balanced between text, research, and a lab. If only every week could be this meaningful.


Modern History is not a big focus this year for Mr. A but everything we do complete has meant something. This week he completed research on the Iron Curtain and the Marshall Plan....working on notebook pages for each. He listened to Churchill's Iron Curtain speech and recapped it at our Friday meeting.

Ancient History for Mr. B is still based on Bible reading, this week on David and Saul. High schoolers are so much better at seeing the strong and weak qualities in history makers. I enjoyed hearing his thoughts from his notebook page and the discussion on Friday.

Literature included the Iliad for Mr. B. He read a few pages out loud to me on Tuesday because he wanted me to hear the gory details from Book 16. (I will spare you the recounting of the battle tale.) Mr. A is still working The Crucible and The Chosen. We both were very animated in our discussion of Act 3 of the Crucible. This was a great scene to epitomize the character of Abigail. Mr. A is going to write a character analysis paper covering Abigail when we wrap this book up so he gleaned lots of great images and quotes from this section of the book.


Poetry continues to focus on Robert Frost but this week I assigned a little different sort of activity to complement one of the poems. Mr. A was to pick a winter poem and then make a watercolor to go along with it. Nicely done.(He made purple snow! How can you not love that?) I do have plans to post our six week Frost plans soon and we are still working our way through a very creative writing course.


Our baking/cooking course is going well and Mr. B is now volunteering to make a variety of things for the family. This week though his specific recipe for his project was Pasta Pizza (similar to THIS recipe). He baked the noodles into a crust and then added toppings, heating again in the oven. Yummy...we are already thinking of variations to this recipe for future meals.

I think those are the main highlights from this seventeenth week of school. We were able to fit in some snowboarding last week with the boys and they are itching to go again but it may not happen for a few weeks. Next week I will catch up on our astronomy, robotics, art, and videography courses since we are in the middle of finishing up a bunch of projects and it will be much more interesting next week. Oh, I totally forgot that Mr. A started his Thinkwell Government video course this week! I will be sure to talk about that soon too.

Thanks for reading our recap  and I hope it has given you some good ideas for your homeschooling, now or in the future.


Barb-Harmony Art Mom