It's a Wrap! Session 2 Week 4 - A Regular Ol' Week

In My Life This Week
The usual. You know - laundry and sweeping and vacuuming and mopping and taxiing and cooking and school. I did finish up one book, Valley of  Ashes, and started another, Born Blue. That's it. But isn't the usual the best kind of week?

L. to R. Speckles, Onyx, Roadrunner, Mustard, Rhodie, and Sassy

What We're Cooking
I've been slowly phasing myself out of the kitchen. I seem to do a lot of cooking since most of our food is prepared from scratch, but it isn't something I enjoy. It's nice to have 3 kitchen-savvy Saplings to help out! This week they prepared for dinner Homeschoolin' Mama's Burrito Bake, Our Best Bites' Catalina Chicken (which was cooked in the crock instead), I Heart Naptimes' Sugar Cookie Bars, and Allrecipes' Eclair Ice Box Cake. Now, to work on getting them to clean up afterward! ::wink::

Top L. to R.: Ice Box Cake and Burrito Bake. Bottom L. to R.: Catalina Chicken and Sugar Cookie
Bars

Homeschool High School
White Pine (finally) wrapped up his Animal and Plant Cell lab this week. It was from 2-3 chapters ago, but his 2 other labs went for 2-4 weeks, slowing this one up. He still has 3 more labs to catch up on. (Sweet Pepperbush needs to gather lab supplies from the store. Soon. No, no, that's not me! Ahem.) But he's moved onto Genetics. (And fortunately those labs are paper demonstrations of DNA strands. Phew!)

He finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo and wrote his Author's Profile and an Approach Paper for Excellence in Literature II.  If you're looking for something heavy on reading and writing for high school, but easy to implement and inexpensive here you go.

He set aside World History, Geography and Cultures for Saxon Algebra this week. He'd much rather do the history of course, but those equations with LETTERS don't solve themselves. ::wink:: 

And White Pine joined his buddy as "Assistant Coaches" for Sugar Maple's basketball team. His buddy's Dad's the coach and his buddy's sister is also on the team. But I think they spent more time "hanging out" then coaching.

L.: Biology Lab Book sample on cells. R. Top: Typing up an English paper. R. Bottom: Stripe helping
White Pine with school.

Accomplishments
The Count of Monte Cristo, Author Profile, Creative Essay, Persuasive Essay, Equations with Parenthesis, Word Problems, Products of Prime Factors, Population and Cell Labs, Genetics, Parts of a Microscope

Homeschool Elementary
Well, let's see...We read lots of Ancient Egypt books (from the library) but I returned them before writing them down. Oops! Then we moved onto the Phoenicians. Now, the Phoenicians are pretty interesting. I can't say as I really knew much about them before SOTW, but they were some of the first glass blowers. The Saplings did some mapwork, writing down notes and highlighting Phoenician areas around the Mediterranean, and then we studied about the first librarian ever, Ashurbanipal, who was also a cruel Assyrian king that conquered Egypt and Canaan back when.

How about our volcano study? It's been a blast! Ha! Ha! Anyway...we studied the different types of volcanoes and how they erupt, filling out a couple of Homeschool Share mini books,  built and watched volcanoes erupt on Volcano Explorer, and learned what type they were, watched videos and played games at neoK12 to reinforce our learning, and watched "Krakotoa: Volcano of Destruction".

Sugar Maple read D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. Again. I'm guessing she may have parts of it memorized by now. There's just something about myths that she really enjoys. 

L. Using a Magnifying Glass to find spelling words in the dictionary. R. Top: Reading under a
snuggly fleece blanket that she made. R. Bottom: A crystal garden made from ice pulled from
the brook

And Balsam Fir built a rocket out of a styrofoam bowl and TP rolls. It even dropped "engines" as it "shot into space", leaving the nose with the astronauts. Unfortunately, there are no photos as his rocket had a disastrous landing. ::wink::

L. to R.: Wearing MY hat, sample of  handwriting, working on a puzzle.

Sugar Maple's Accomplishments
Writing - Letter to Pen Pal, Vocabulary Building, Sequential Spelling - Day 18-23, Cursive, Decimal Place Value Through 100ths, Naming Points on a Number Line, Volcanoes, Phoenicians, Assyrians

Balsam Fir's Accomplishments
Henry and Mudge in the Sparkly Days, Sight Words and Spelling with Samson, Handwriting, Addition with Carrying, Calendar, Volcanoes, Phoenicians, Assyrians, 100 Piece Puzzle

Places We Went and People We Saw
★ Scouts (BF/WP) ★ Basketball (SM/WP) ★ Clarinet/Band (SM) ★ 

Helpful Homeschool Hint and Resource

I spent some time this week updating my Helpful Edu-sites page. Would you check it out? There's lots and lots of stuff there! And everything is free (if you don't count printing costs). Do you have any great sites I should add? Comment below please!

Something Silly to Share
It's not our cat Stripe, but it could be. I'm sure she'll gets lots of enjoyment out of the Christmas tree in the days ahead. 

Well, that's a wrap! I don't know about you, but it's hard to believe that tomorrow is DECEMBER and in a few weeks it'll be 2013. Wowzers! We're linking up to these great blogs. Have a wonderful week!