Week in Review - Back to School After Break

Greetings from Argus, Poseidon, and Zeus! My middle son, inspired by our study of Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece, created these adorable clay figures. I love it when our schoolwork manifests itself in my children's independent art work.

Last week was our first week back after a three week break for the holidays. Oh, there was so much crying, kicking, and screaming. Thankfully, my children adjusted to getting back to school much better than I did! Seriously, though, it IS hard getting back into the swing of things after a break! Also, we have been uber-busy with swim meets as well, spending all of the last two week-ends at pools. We started back to school last Tuesday since we didn't return from the Mid-States Championships in Indiana until late Sunday evening. My daughter represented Ohio on the LE/Ohio swim team once again this year. Even with a short 4 day week, we did manage to get quite a bit accomplished.

We have been diligently continuing our study of the United States, state by state, using a Trail Guide to U.S. Geography. We started this study last school year and I'm beginning to think there are actually more than 50 states! Last week we covered North Dakota and we have 18 states left to study now. Hopefully, we will completely finish our study of the United States this school year.

The most exciting thing to happen this week was to finally see my middle son really become captivated by a book that doesn't have any pictures. He is reading "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan to tie-in with our Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece unit study and he LOVES it. This is the first book that he has been really excited about - he talks to his friends about it, he can easily answer all of the discussion questions I prepared for him, and he absolutely can't wait to see the movie! He has also asked if he can read the next book in the series for school. I'm so happy that the love of reading has finally seemed to click in place for him.

This week in our unit study we learned about the differences between Sparta and Athens, symposiums, food and the government in Ancient Greece. We also continued our study of Greek Mythology using the wonderful D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.

As I was rushing through the house with a basket of dirty laundry one day this week, my youngest son flagged me down and asked for help with his English lesson. He was struggling with guide words. On his worktext page, he was given guide words and he had to identify which of the words from a list would be found on that dictionary page. He just didn't get it. Then, I remembered that both of my other children struggled with guide words as well. First, I got out a real dictionary and showed him how guide words are used. Then, I had a great idea. I grabbed index cards and simply wrote out the words from each of the lists, along with the guide words.

Then, I told him not to worry about guide words - just put the words in alphabetical order. He could do that easily. After putting the words in alphabetical order, he could actually see which words came between the guide words. I wish I had thought of this idea when my other two were struggling to understand guide words!

We ended the week by learning about Ancient Greek pottery. The children tried their hand at black on red pottery.

We also went outside on Friday for nature study and looked for winter color. Overall, it went pretty well and I took some lovely pictures. I will post about our nature study soon. I adore the blue color mixed in with the green on this evergreen tree.

We have a short week ahead of us. My daughter will become (gasp!) a teenager this week and we are celebrating her birthday with an overnight trip to an indoor water park. We have a full and joy-filled week ahead of us with our mini-trip, a small dinner party, an extended family birthday party, and a swim meet!