Friday, October 11, 2013

A Peak at Our Week: Ch-Ch-Changes! Keeping Learning New

In My Life This Week
I pondered what to write in this section. I seem to do the same things every single week: homeschooling, gardening, animals, chores, reading, Reality TV. It's not particularly exciting, but that's just how I like it. I would rather have MONOTONOUS than CHAOS. What about you?

Things I Worked On
 Pulled the dying plants from the flower garden ❦ Moved the compost into the garden and started anew ❦ Cleaned the coop ❦ Removed "Hot Spots" from livingroom ❦ READ BOOKS ❦

What We're Cooking
Meatball Subs! While out with Jake, taking photos for his photojournalism assignment, we decided to have subs on Sunday. We haven't had them in FOREVER. Like most of my recipes, my meatballs are a little of this, a little of that, and nothing measured. For these meatballs, I mixed together lean ground beef, quick oats, 2 little eggs, finely diced green pepper and onions, shredded carrot, and steak seasonings. But - A-ha! - I decided to use my Pampered Chef scooper to make the balls. Sure, they were flat on one side, but such a quick, cleaner way to make meatballs! I topped the subs with marinara and shredded cheddar, then popped them in the oven under broil until the bread was toasted and the cheese melted, served with steamed broccoli.


High School Happenings
Jake completed his building project to test acceleration of an object due to gravity. He continued to learn Chinese phrases, sounds and characters. The focus is on reading and saying rather than writing though. He used box blots to graph data.

Homeschool Happenings

Have you seen the "America: The Story of Us" videos? It's a video series on American history, and much more intriguing than the NROC videos we're taking a (permanent?) break from. This week we focused on "Rebels", the first colonies in American through the Revolution, supplementing with specific place, event or people You Tube videos.

But that wasn't the only thing I changed up this week.

 Sam started a copywork journal. I'm not a huge fan of copywork, but I do see how it can be a powerful learning tool for grammar, writing, spelling, handwriting, and reading. I chose for him to copy and read fluently 2 poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. He was less than thrilled, but it's no surprise since it's HARD WORK for him to visually track sentences word-by-word, recreating the sentences on paper in legible handwriting. But we got through it. Perhaps next week I'll find something more interesting for him to copy. Airplanes? Legos? Minecraft?

Cati read A Picture-Perfect World: A Hidden-Picture Habitats Book to Sam as a way of wrapping up his study of biomes. Winnie, our Nova Scotia Toller, wanted to listen in too.

And we started Art Fraud Detectives. Such a COOL book! The kids read about different artists and their works then, with careful, thorough observation, try to spot differences in real paintings and "frauds", solving the mystery of what gang did what forgeries. Art, Mystery and Puzzles wrapped into one book!

Quick Peek
Easy Grammar (C) - Verb Phrases & Irregular Verbs
Daily Grammar - Days 17- 19 (C) & Days 20-25 (S)
Tanka & Diamante Poems (C) & Poetry Copywork (S)
Spelling Power - List 19 (C) & List 9 (S)
The Throne of Fire (C) & The Knight at Dawn (S)
Saxon (C) - Lessons 30, Test 5, 6, 7 & Math-U-See (S) - 10E-X, Test 10, 11A-B
Life Science - Genetics & Heredity (C) & Biomes & Plants & (S)
"America: The Story of Us: Rebels", "America: The Story of Us: Revolution" & additional videos
Art Fraud Detectives - Piero Della Francesca, Paola Uccello


People and Places
❦ F_ Fair with D__ (J) ❦ Scouts (J) ❦ Jazz and Concert Band (C) ❦

Something to Share

As ALWAYS, linking up to these WONDERFUL blogs:
Homegrown Learners photo 79396fe0-1f8b-44f8-a90e-f8ca7bfa801e_zpsa74bcc3b.jpgHip Homeschool Hop Button

14 comments:

  1. You make meat balls the same way I do.

    We do dictations which also work for learning the structure of sentences, grammar, and punctuation. Some of the dictations provided by Charlotte Mason curriculum are hugely long sentences with numerous commas and colons. The kids hate them.

    Oh, by the way, you have me craving a meatball sub now. Thanks!

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  2. Oh we love meatball subs. Ching idea for menu next week! Blessings to your weekend!

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  3. I really love your quote. I have found I am so much saner and happier when remember each day's blessings.

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  4. The meatball subs look delicious! Also, I'm going to have to check out the Art Fraud Detectives book. I think that Firecracker would think it was very cool!

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  5. Yum! Meatball subs. What a wonderful week. I have some that really hate copywork. I only do it with them occasionally. We love the history series you are using. It is fun to watch.
    Blessings, Dawn

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  6. A nice regular week is always the best. The shared graphic is very true and a nice reminder.

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  7. That meatball sub looks YUMMY! Jake seems to be doing so well in High School. We love the America:Story of Us videos. They used to be on Netflix streaming but we own them too. Happy weekend!! :)

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  8. Hi Jessy,
    I found you at Collage Friday.
    What a super idea using a scoop to make meatballs! Love that tip.
    I started using Copy Edit for Grammar, in correcting others mistakes, my son is learning what is right. Evan Moor has some good ones.
    Love that Airplane, very creative.
    I would like to invite you to join my Saturday link up as well. It's called, "This Week..." It is a homeschool week in review link up.
    I would love for you to join in.
    ~~ Renee
    http://www.greatpeaceacademy.com

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  9. Came to your blog by way of the Let's Homeschool High school Blog Hop.
    Your meatballs look delicious! I am going to add them to my menu this week. I love the scoop idea, too! I also love your something to share quote. It is easy to focus on the troubles because they seem to be the "squeaky wheel". Thanks for the reminder!

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    1. Thanks for popping in, Linda! I wasn't able to find your high school blog...

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  10. I most definitely agree! I'll take monotony over chaos any day! Though I can assure you that your blog isn't boring! I love to see what you all are up to! I've seen that Art Fraud Detective Book. It is cool! Thanks for sharing at FF!

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  11. I often struggle with the "in my life this week" section too. I really do feel like I write the same. old. thing. every. single. week. :-) But I wholeheartedly agree with you that monotonous is better than chaos.

    I'm interested in checking out the Art detective book. It sounds great. Thanks for sharing about it.

    Sounds like you had a great week. Hope this one is going well too. Blessings to you and yours!

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  12. Okay, I have to make meatball subs for dinner now! Yum!
    The Art Fraud Detective sounds fun too:) We'll have to check it out.

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