Weekly Wrap Up – The Back to School Edition

Our first day “back to school” went well.  I scheduled our work load light for the first week.   It didn’t take me long to realize I needed to start adding more for Lindsey. 

Olivia is really enjoying her new language arts items.  We’ve zipped through the first 14 lessons of All About Spelling Level 1.  I’m thinking we’ll be finished it by the end of  next week.  Then we can start on Level 2.

The First Language Lessons is incredible!  I’m moving at a normal pace (1 lesson per day) on this one for now.  One reason is that Lindsey has been added to the lesson work.  The other reason is that Olivia REALLY needs to work on answering things in complete sentences and this is working wonderfully.  I don’t want to rush her at this point.

Writing With Ease has been a much needed break from worksheet, worksheet, worksheet.   I didn’t purchase the workbook to accompany it.  We’re using regular wide ruled notebook paper instead.  It’s cheaper and gets Olivia used to writing on normal size paper too.

Early in the week we traveled to a local pipe organ manufacturing company for the debut of their Opus 64.   It was an awesome trip, be SURE to read my post form earlier in the week by clicking here.

We’ve picked back up in our study of the states, starting this week with Maryland.  We colored our state map, state flag and completed our state report form for our notebooks.

Then we moved on to our famous person from Maryland, Harriet Tubman, aka Moses for leading her people out of slavery.  Although both girls were glad to learn about this brave woman, they were both disturbed by the idea of slavery.   This was our first venture into this part of America’s history.  Lindsey was quick to point out that “the song says red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children”. 

Books We Used:

Harriet Tubman; by Dana Meachen Rau
Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky; by Faith Ringgold
Escape North! The Story of Harriet Tubman; by Monica Kulling
Bound for the Promised Land – Harriet Tubman Portrait of an American Hero; by Kate Clifford Larson

Our focus for science this week was improving our understanding of creation.  We worked on memorizing what part of creation took part on each day.  The girls had fun trying to imagine what God did to rest on the seventh day.  Olivia is convinced he took a nap.   Lindsey thinks he sat down in a REALLY big chair and relaxed.

Thursday night was Olivia’s first “official” game of the fall baseball season.  She and I have been practicing a lot this last week and it finally showed!  She had two really good hits and drove in two runs. Her team won 8-1.   Then we headed to the other end of our city park to listed to a free concert by the Landon Spradlin Blues Band.   I met Landon years ago while I was on the road with my brother.  It was wonderful to see and hear him again.  They did a full set of “typical” blues music, and then moved into some of his own stuff.  Imagine the surprise of the fans when he started seeing Christian music, blues style!   Good stuff!

Today was a short day, only math and language arts.  Then some much needed grocery shopping. Late this evening we’re headed to our local Frontier Culture Museum for their first Friday free event. 

Hoping everyone else had a great week!  Don’t forget to visit the Weekly Wrap Up!