Week In Review - A Chariot, Bible Times, and Amber's #1!

What a fun and exciting week!  Most exciting, the USA Swimming rankings were updated this week, and right now, Amber has the #1 fastest time in the United States for 13 year old girls in the 50 Freestyle!  She is super-excited and is feeling more hopeful than ever that her Junior National cut in the 50 Free is within her reach!  The Junior National cut is 23.79 and Amber's best time is 24.22 so she's getting closer and closer.  For those who don't spend endless hours at pools with competitive swimmers (like me), Junior Nationals is a national level swim meet (for the WHOLE United States) held twice a year, for those swimmers 18 and under who make the time cuts.

Needless to say, my teenage daughter has been in really good spirits this week!  In between dreaming about Junior Nationals, she still had to do her schoolwork!  Amber finished "The Scarlet Letter" and absolutely adored it.  I was so, so happy the other night when she actually said to me, "I'm so glad you're having me read all of these classic books."  She started reading "Treasure Island" this week and is enjoying that book as well.  She is a huge "Pirates of the Caribbean" fan and she's been having so much fun drawing connections between those movies and "Treasure Island."

She also seems to be back on track with Algebra and has been doing well in her lessons.  In Biology, she is looking forward to getting past the next few chapters because she thinks the book looks much more interesting (and a bit easier) once she gets past all the microscopic stuff.

Mason finished "James and the Giant Peach" this week and liked the book quite a bit.  We plan to watch the movie soon and discuss any differences we see between the book and the movie.  He started reading "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" this week.

Duncan and Mason started a new section in their Ancient History Writing Lessons this week on narrative stories.  Basically, they are applying the key-word outline idea to a narrative story without pulling key words from each sentence.  We are working on the first paragraph together as it is a bit different than what they have done so far in the course.

We took one day this week just to work on projects which was such a blessing.  Amber and Mason spent most of the day designing and painting the front of the chariot their youth group is making for our church's annual Trunk or Treat this coming Saturday.  Their youth group is sponsoring a car for the event with an ancient Roman theme.  They are tranforming the back of the truck into a Roman chariot.  I was so impressed with Amber and Mason's finished chariot front!

During our "working on projects day" Amber also helped Duncan tie-dye a t-shirt for his Halloween costume.  She also tie-dyed another shirt for herself at the same time.

While all of this creative activity was going on, I spent most of the day in the kitchen baking cookies for our church's Trunk or Treat event on Saturday.  I made almost 5 dozen in all!

Mason worked throughout the week on making more ornaments for the mini-tree he is donating to our local library for their annual silent auction.  I think my favorite ornament from this week is the mini Hostess cupcake.  He used Sculpey III to craft the ornaments. 

In history this week, we moved out of ancient Egypt into a study of the ancient Israelites.  We started reading two great books, Lamps, Scrolls & Goatskin Bottles and Kings and Carpenters: 100 Bible Land Jobs You Might Have Praised or Panned.  Since so much of ancient Israelite history is biblical history, I have heard many times this week - "I remember that from Veggie Tales."  Duncan used our "work on projects day" to watch a few of our Veggie Tales VHS tapes while doing Perler beads.

That was our Week in Review!  If you would like to read about what other homeschoolers have been doing this week, check out the Weekly Wrap Up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.