School Check In

It was an interesting week. Caleb celebrated his 11th birthday on Monday. He got the day off from school. We had three parties for him over the weekend (one with a friend and two with family). Our house is small, so we usually have one side of the family over one evening and the other side a different evening. Tyler's birthday is in the summer and we can usually entertain outside and have just one party.

Caleb picked a camp out theme and beach theme for his cakes. Scott decorated the cakes!

It was a tough week and school work was not getting done. I decided Wednesday that we were just going to take the rest of the week off. Surprisingly, we were able to log our normal amount of hours the rest of the week! (I am now trying to decide if we need to make up these days. Hour wise we are fine, but we are now behind in core subjects. Maybe we will just take one make up day on spring break.)

We did a little unschooling. We spent 5 hours at the library one day. Did a few programs and the boys spent a few hours just exploring the library (in between programs). We came home with some great books to read! They attended an art program and spent a few hours on Friday making more art projects from what they learned. Loved this!!

We got another Top Secret Adventure from Highlights in the mail this week and the boys spent many hours learning about Australia. This will be Tyler's next topic for geography. This a great way of sneaking in some school work and the boys have no idea they are doing school work!  ; )

I noticed that I have not done any history with Caleb for the past two weeks. Sigh! While at the library I found Story of the World I on cds. Now, we had checked at the book, but that didn't go over well. I put the cd in while in the car and skipped to the part we should be covering (Ancient Greece) and we listened to several chapters. It was a hit. I am thinking we may just continue with this (and some living books) for the rest of the school year. At least until I have to take the cds back to the library. Our normal program is taking more time then I want to spend on history and that is the reason it isn't getting done. I need to spend more time on Math, spelling, and writing with Caleb. So, this is the current plan for history . . . . right now.

The boys also got a few hours of animal husbandry in this week. We had rain this week and for some reason our chickens like to leave the yard when it rains. The boys kept running down the street to bring the chickens home. Scott was out of town for work a few days so the boys were 100% in charge of taking care of the chickens. It is hard work, but they are good at it!