Week in Review - Eight Appointments, No Caffeine and Deep Gum Dental Cleaning

This week has been in one word, humbling. We have had no less than 5 (3 of which were mine) afternoon doctor/dentist (and 3 haircut) appointments this week. I also needed to make a huge trip to Super Wal-Mart and run a swimsuit related errand with my daughter. Handling so many afternoon appointments, errands, evening swim team, and school has been humbling in and of itself.

Oh, and I also had half of a deep gum cleaning at the dentist this week. I have one word of advice, FLOSS! I get to go back for the second half of my deep gum cleaning in a few weeks. Really, just floss. And, did I mention that I have had to give up caffeine due to some irregularities in my heart beat that are likely caffeine-related? Really, I've had better weeks.

We did manage to have a fairly productive week amidst the chaos of appointments, though I have no fun, hands-on projects to discuss this week besides art class. Our art lesson was really hard today, and even quite frustrating for my youngest child. So, art wasn't even that fun this week!

While the children completed their independent work each day, we were not able to do our work together every single day this week so we didn't make a lot of progress forward on our human body unit. We did finish up discussing the 5 senses, and we finished our read-aloud about Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson (excellent and enjoyed by all). We watched only one video this week, Reading Rainbow Opt which I would recommend. The video focused on many different kinds of optical illusions, which are always fascinating.

My youngest read five books this week independently about the senses, all of which were well-done and quite informational.

• Hearing by Rebecca Olien
• Smelling by Rebecca Olien
• Tasting by Rebecca Olien
• Cuts and Scrapes by Sharon Gordon
• Helen Keller, Courage in the Dark by Johanna Hurwitz

My oldest read Understanding Your Senses which is excellent. My 5th grade son continued reading in You're Tall in the Morning But Shorter at Night and he also read Helen Keller, Courage in the Dark.

One of the big accomplishments this week for my boys was that both of them passed their typing test and are now each the RULER OF TYPER ISLAND. They both have been working through Typing Instructor for Kids 4 since the beginning of our school year back in August. They had worked through all of the typing lessons and were practicing for 15 minutes per day. Each of them had taken the final test several times, but their word-per-minute rate was not fast enough to move on. Well, this week they both passed their typing tests! Now that they are both rulers of Typer Island, they have many more typing games from which to choose to practice their typing skills. They were both SO excited to become rulers of Typer Island!

Duncan (3rd) finished his Growing With Grammar 2 course this week. Next week, he will start a short grammar study from Fortunately For You Books - Grammar By THIS Book focusing on The First Thanksgiving Day. After that, I'm not sure what direction I'll be taking with Duncan's grammar study for the rest of the year. The Growing With Grammar 3 book is much more work than Growing With Grammar 2 and I'm not sure if he is ready for that yet at the age of 8.

As a family project, we put together a shoebox for a 10-14 year old girl for Operation Christmas Child. My daughter was very excited about the project and she wrapped the shoebox (quite a difficult task) and told me what items she would like to put in the shoebox. We included primarily practical items (soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, socks), school supplies (pencils, crayons, notebooks, sharpener), and some fun items (hair accessories, small stuffed animal, lollipops). We'll be dropping the box off at church when we go on Saturday night. Putting together the shoebox is the first of several projects I hope to do this Christmas season to help us reach out to the world around us and share the joy of the season.

Lastly, our art class was the most difficult one we have completed so far. The focus was on contour drawings of people. My husband, each of the kids, and I posed for the children so each of the kids had four people in their drawing. All of them were challenged by this project, particularly my youngest son.

Overall, I thought they did a good job. Drawing people is hard! At the end, they had to decide who was in the foreground and who was in the background. They also had to choose one person to detail fully with color. Amber (7th) chose me!Mason (5th) chose me to detail as well.

Duncan (3rd) was really struggling by the last model so his sister looks a bit like an octopus. We all tried to be very encouraging and to remember that the focus should be on the PROCESS not the product. So, he chose to detail his octo-sister and made a joke out of it. Next week will be a short week for us - we are taking Wednesday through Friday off for Thanksgiving. I, for one, am really looking forward to the break. If you want to see what other homeschoolers were doing this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.