Week in Review - A Birthday, Independent Work, and a Day at the Doctor's

Some of our weeks are full of exciting hands-on learning that make for great pictures...and some are not.  This past week would definitely fall into the not category. 

I'll start with the least pleasant aspect of my week.  I went back and forth about sharing any information about my day at the doctor's this week but, ultimately I chose to share.  Why?  Well, I grew up in a house where everything was private, private, private.  There were lots and lots of things that you just didn't talk about.  My mom even told me never to brush my teeth in front of my husband because that's a private thing.  Really? 

As I've gotten older and have had to deal with health issues with myself and my loved ones, I just think it's best to be open about medical procedures so others are not afraid to have tests done that could be life-saving.  After some minor issues, my primary care physician ordered a colonoscopy for me.  While I certainly am not looking forward to the next one, it truly wasn't that bad.  But, given the "bodily prep" involved and the recovery time, I was not available for my children from Wednesday afternoon until Thursday night.  Thankfully, my test came back normal with no problems!  But, of course, we had to work around my medical procedure for our school week.

On a much more joyful note, our week started off with a fun trip to Dave & Buster's for Mason's 12th birthday on Sunday after church.  We enjoyed a great lunch and the boys loved playing the video games in the gigantic game room.  We had a family party for Mason last week-end so now we've completely celebrated his birthday!

We are winding down our ancient Egypt studies and will be moving into another area of ancient history next week.  We finished watching Egypt's Golden Empire (highly recommended) and made cartouches this week.

In science this week with my boys, we watched Physical Science in Action, Elements, Compounds, & Mixtures (recommended).  After much debate, I have decided to spend the entire year studying Chemistry with my boys.  In addition to Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry, I'm using three other resources that I already have:  Christian Kids Explore Chemistry, Great Science Adventures:  Discovering Atoms, Molecules, and Matter, and the TOPS Analysis Unit.

Amber hit her first real stumbling block in Algebra this week.  Rather than go forward, she spent today going back over all the lessons from this week, re-doing the problems that she missed, and then watching the solutions CD for any she missed a second time.

In her Literary Analysis class, she is REALLY enjoying The Scarlet Letter even though she does find it to be a challenging book.  I finished the book this week and we've been having so many interesting conversations about the book.  As well, we've both found so many quotes that we've enjoyed sharing with each other.  I love that I can learn right alongside my children!

We have a FULL week-end of swim meets ahead of us.  We are doing a dual meet tonight against just one other team, then we have a two day normal USA meet all day Saturday and Sunday.  With our boys swimming in the morning session, and our daughter swimming in the afternoon session, it will definitely be a long week-end!  In truth, though, my husband and I love to see them swim.

That was our Week in Review!  To read about what other homeschoolers were doing this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.