Week in Review - Lots of Phone Calls, First Latin Test, and a Full-Grown-Frog

Mason and Hershey snuggle up together on the "ugly couch" in the school room to take a little break .

Yes, it's been a rather long and tiring week.  We're definitely all ready for the week-end as evidenced by Mason and Hershey enjoying a little down time during a quick break in Mason's morning schoolwork!  I'm not quite sure why our dog was so tired - she sleeps a TON - but I can understand Mason being tired after a long week of schoolwork and swim team practice.

For me, the week seemed quite long because my mind was often with my mother in the hospital.  She was hospitalized unexpectedly all week due to some issues with her heart.  She was finally released today and her condition should be able to be managed with medication and diet modification but she will continue to be monitored by her heart doctor.  So, my homeschool days were interrupted quite a bit more than usual this week with phone calls that I needed to take the time to answer.

The children are all proceeding well in their academic subjects this year.  The most exciting news this week for Amber was when her Latin teacher e-mailed me to let us know that she earned a 100% on her first Latin test!  Way to go, Amber!  While Amber wasn't quite sure about Latin at first, it is now definitely one of her favorite subjects.  She loves making the connections between Latin words and English words that are derived from Latin.

All of the fun, hands-on work here this week was related to my children's science courses.  Mason and I did a fun experiment to demonstrate the scientific method.  He suspended a cup between stacks of books on an uncooked fettuccine noodle.  After making his prediction about how many pennies the cup would hold before the noodle broke, he added pennies one at a time to the cup.  Each time he added a penny, he lifted the cup up and then lowered in back gently on the noodle.

How many pennies would you predict it would take to break the noodle?  Mason predicted 30 but it took 100 pennies to finally break the noodle!

Amber's Marine Biology labs this week were both microscope work.  She made some lovely drawings of diatoms and other tiny marine creatures for her lab notebook.

  
Duncan's long-awaited tadpole finally arrived.  Even if you're not teaching an elementary science class this year, you can probably tell that the little guy in the bag is definitely NOT a tadpole anymore!  To read more about our froggy adventure, visit my post, "Grew A Frog?"

Mason and Duncan are both working on some pretty cool hands-on projects for science as well that aren't finished yet.  Mason is building a massive volcano and has finished the paper-mache part of the project.  He plans to paint it this week-end...and then he'll be making it explode!

Duncan is working on designing his own insect to go along with his current chapter about insects in science.  His special bug lives in caves and eats meat.  Interestingly, one eye is also bigger than the other.  I'm looking forward to seeing his finished creation.  He, too, plans to finish his project this week-end.

To bring this week in review to a close, I will end with five random statements that relate to our school year thus far.

• As I watched my teenage daughter make herself a cup of hot tea to drink while she watched her Fundamentals of Literature DVD class, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that we are DEFINITELY making the best choice for our family by homeschooling our daughter all the way through high school.  It's good to have her home.
• Amber is almost done listening to "Watership Down."  I'm not sure that she is loving the book quite as much as I did but she definitely likes the book quite a bit.  She also really likes the Audible app she downloaded onto her iPod so she could listen to the book after I purchased it through Audible.
• I finished reading "The Indian in the Cupboard" last week-end and it was such a good book!  Duncan is now listening to the book on my Kindle.  
• I'm so glad I decided to outsource Latin this year.  Amber adores her Latin teacher and the class is going so well and I don't have to learn Latin.
• Amber hasn't hit a wall yet in Algebra 2 and I sincerely hope she doesn't.  Math 6 and Math 7 are both going quite well for Duncan and Mason.  With all of the grading I have to do, I certainly love the self-grading feature of Teaching Textbooks for the lower grades.

That was our Week in Review!  To read about what other homeschool bloggers have been doing this week, please visit the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.