Weekly Wrap Up – The Pre-Thanksgiving Edition

Oh.my.gosh!  I am exhausted after this week, seriously!  Monday was a “normal” day.  Tuesday was normal, other than adding the baby to it. Wednesday was a regular school day, plus piano, followed by a 2 hour ballet practice followed by 2 hours of Awana.  Thursday was school, plus Ellie, plus PEACH (Ellie wasn’t allowed in the nursery, so I had her in class with my 9 5-year olds) plus 4-H.  Friday was a short school day…yeah.  So when that was finished I had to catch up on the laundry and housework, make cookies for a bake sale for the dance company, followed by a meeting for our Sunday School directors, and them more baking snacks for a jewelry party for Saturday night.    Did I mention EXHAUSTED???

Ok, enough whining…on with the wrap up.

History:  I took the easy way out and reviewed some of our Thanksgiving work from years gone by.   We reviewed our study of Squanto, including the timeline we made of his life.

We also reviewed our previous study of the Wampanoag, including this lovely replica of the Wampanoag home.

We spent a lot of time reading about Thanksgiving.  Books we read included:

Squanto Fried of the Pilgrims; by Clyde Robert Bulla
Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving; by Eric Metaxas
Sarah Morton’s Day, A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl; by Kate Waters
Thanksgiving Day at Our House; by Nancy White Carlstrom

We made our own Thanksgiving fact books.  We included a map of the Mayflower journey, vocabulary, copy work, poetry, turkeys, pilgrims, poetry and Native Americans.  I’m sure it would have made a lovely lapbook, but hey there’s something to be said for printing on regular paper and slapping a cover on it!

 

As part of our Thanksgiving studies, we took note of how blessed we are, to excess at times.  We found a great local program called The Big Give, and spent time going through our GOOD things to make donations.  We’re also scheduling a day to go and help set up items as well.

Math:  I need a “bang head here” sign.  I’m seriously looking forward to a break from math next week. 

Language Arts:  We didn't do any spelling, or First Language Lessons this week. 

Science:   Um, yeah…nothing here either.

Latin:   Ahhh, now see, we DID do Latin!  Lesson 13 is a review week.  So we spent time working on vocabulary, singular/plurals and using those things in every day language.

I had several reasons for such a “relaxed” week.  Most of those reasons being that ALL of our extra curricular activities hit this week (as noted in my opening rant paragraph).  They just so happened to ALSO land on days when Eliana was here.  GAH!

Activity Day:   Dr. Seuss is such a fun theme for this age group.  Read all about the “Foot Book” activity day here.

4-H:  This was a bit disappointing.  After the 30 minute commute into the boonies we found out the guest speaker had backed out and the kids spent the evening playing “train wreck”.  Grrr…

Piano:   Moving right along.

Ballet:   This week was the beginning of intensive Nutcracker practice.   Olivia had a 2 hour practice on Wednesday night.  Saturday will be another 2 hour practice.  Oh, and the shirts for the dancers are in.  Aren’t these great!

Awana:  The girls took their Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes to Awana for collection.   Olivia memorized two new verse and Lindsey continued working on the two she learned last week but didn’t get to recite.

Life Skills:   Olivia learned how to feed and burp the baby.  The burping was funny, but I had to be a lot closer in case of accident, so I couldn’t get photos of that.

I do hope everyone else had a great week!  Be sure to check out the Weekly Wrap Up!