A Busy Week: April 7 - 13

In My Life This Week
Phew! ((deep breath)) It's been QUITE a week at Our Side of the Mountain! And I'm exhausted and ready for a weekend of reading and relaxing. Wonder if it'll happen? LOL

So, what did you do last weekend? Easter celebrations?

I spent Friday and Saturday purging and organizing 2000+ books. Picture them all piled onto a playroom floor with Legos, puzzle pieces and old Pokemon cards mixed in. Can't picture it? Here's some photos for you! LOL

Did you cringe? Yep! I avoided the playroom, shading my eyes as I walked by. Really. But with a little nudge and lots of help from Blue Spruce and the Saplings, I finally had the energy to tackle the Disaster Area. The books AND the playroom are looking SO good now! I can ACTUALLY find the books I'm looking for! No running to the library for a book I know we have but can't find! (And with gasoline just over $4.00/gallon here, we'll be doing less "roading" for everything!)

Since organizing that many books wasn't enough over the weekend, we went to the Community Easter Egg Hunt, bringing 2 extra kids with us. Sugar Maple joined the Girl Scouts IN ANOTHER STATE for a day at an indoor waterpark. (She rode with one of the leaders though. Phew!) We had Easter dinner with some good friends "down the road", bringing back her son for an overnight on Saturday, and on Sunday the Easter bunny came and left sweets, and we had 7 kids running in and out ALL day. And then Monday arrived!

Homeschool Happenings
School-wise we trudged along, sometimes happily, sometimes grumpily. We're ready for summer break! And sometimes we do just that, but I struggle with giving us the time we need to rest and meeting all those ambitious goals I've made for the year and ending in early May (as usual). It really isn't THAT important to finish ALL those lessons, is it?

White Pine's Eclipse Diagrams

We are wrapping some things up for the year. Sugar Maple and Balsam Fir finished up Science - a Human Body unit study - last Friday. Their focus is on Language Arts and Math now. And White Pine completed ALMOST THE WHOLE PRENTICE HALL EARTH SCIENCE text book! 800+ pages!


With only 14 - 24 days left this year - White Pine has 14, Sugar Maple 24 and Balsam Fir 21 - we're in the home-stretch! Do you suppose I could talk Sugar Maple and Balsam Fir into completing some WEEKEND school to catch up with White Pine?

Have I already shared how excited I am of Balsam Fir's reading? Probably, huh? LOL He works so hard to read and sometimes it's QUITE frustrating for him, but he sticks with it stubbornly. This week he's been reading more of the "I Can Read it All by Myself" Dr. Suess books. (Oh, and my book reorganize resulted in relocating 36 of these gems! Great, fun resource for beginning readers!)

Sugar Maple had her Spring Band Concert on Wednesday. Although some days it's been a struggle to get her to practice, we're proud of her musical accomplishments! (Especially me! I have NO musical abilities whatsoever! LOL)

The Saplings discovered "Survivorman" on Netlfix. Have you seen this show? It's about a man who spends 7 days in different environments, alone, with minimum supplies, living off the land. Balsam Fir, especially, enjoys seeing how he builds shelters from trees, catches fish and frogs, and makes fires with sticks.

And we started the garden! Whoop! We turned over the raised 12x6 bed, stuck in dead tree branches  and planted our first cool weather crop: peas. Tree branches? Instead of purchasing and using wire cages or garden netting, we use branches as trellises for our plants. This gives the plants a NATURAL place to vine AND it doesn't cost us a penny! Green gardening! At the end of the season they can be pulled out and thrown into the woods to decompose.

 

Cook'n in the Kitchen
We made this Taco Salad recipe from Taste of Home. It REALLY was crowd-pleasing!  But we made some changes to the recipe...No mayo for one. Would you believe that my Saplings don't care for mayo? We skipped the black olives too and used mild chunky salsa for the tomatoes and taco sauce. The Saplings gave it 2 thumps up! Do you think it would work for a quick CAMPING meal?

And the Saplings made a Chocolate Eclair Ice Box Cake from Mr. Food. It was super simple to make! They even used HOMEMADE whipped topping from heavy cream, a little sugar and vanilla. Try this one out with your lil' chefs!

Ponderings
How to celebrate the end of another crazy year of homeschooling? A picnic at the state park? A trip to Acadia National Park for exploring? A special dinner? Hmm...What to do?

A Photo to Share

Balsam Fir and a Cuddly Cheeper Watching TV

Links to Share
Did you see my very first TOS reviews this past week? I'm super excited to be a part of the TOS Homeschool Crew! Check out my reviews here and here. What do you think?

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