Overall, this was another smooth and productive week for us, although I didn't get quite as far in our history studies or my daughter's sewing class as I had planned. We took a long lunch with my husband at one of my favorite restaurants, Cracker Barrel, on Wednesday and nobody felt like doing our afternoon history studies when we got back home (including me). But, the opportunity to have a lovely lunch with my whole family at one of my favorite restaurants doesn't come up every day so I consider it a good trade-off! As well, we rushed out the door after art on Friday afternoon to make it to Kohl's to purchase some clothes for the kids before evening swim team so I didn't get to my planned sewing lesson with Amber. But, again, I had a great coupon and there was a good sale and I like the children to wear clothes. So, another good trade-off as far as I am concerned!
The highlights of our week definitely center around science. The boys and I are enjoying our Chemistry studies with our Real Science 4 Kids curriculum! This week we studied molecules and my boys completed a fabulous hands-on project with a Molecule Kit. Using the kit, they made 16 different molecules and labelled them. I am currently working on attaching an eye screw to each molecule so that I can hang them up in our school room. I figure that molecule models hanging from the ceiling should make us all more intelligent just by osmosis! You can read all about our adventures with the Molecule Kit here.
My daughter and I did her first hands-on Biology lab this week. The focus of the lab was on learning to use the microscope, making slides, and viewing cheek cells. Although my daughter was quite interested, I was definitely the more excited of the two of us when we actually got to see some of her cheek cells under the microscope. I feel she is quite lucky to have such an enthusiastic lab partner! I'm thinking, though, that she is probably quite glad that she doesn't have to do the dissection labs with me this year. She'll be doing those with a homeschooling friend who is taking the same Biology course this year.
In history this week, I have already taken a slight rabbit trail from the Quest for the Ancient World curriculum that we're using this year. Our focus this week was the Ice Age and I decided that I wanted us to spend a bit more time on the Ice Age than just one week. To supplement the information in our history curriculum, I purchased the Ice Age Project Pack from Hands of a Child and we're working our way through the lapbook. We also watched one episode of Prehistoric Predators from National Geographic on the Saber toothed Tiger. We all found the program quite interesting.
We deviated from our regular art curriculum this week to complete a project based on the art of the ancient Australian people. To guide our project, we used a segment from the DVD, World Art which I like quite a bit.
The art project was fairly simple. Following the instruction on the DVD, the children first made a border around their paper. Then, they sketched an Australian animal of their choice. Finally, they filled in a backbone and other designs on their animals. The only materials needed for this project were white colored pencils and dark red paper. I think their projects turned out very well!
So, that was our Week in Review for our second week of school. If you'd like to read about what other homeschoolers were doing this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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