Weekly Wrap-Up: Declaration of Independence Edition

It's time for our weekly wrap-up hosted by Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. And look, I'm late getting it up again. LOL

It was a good week but a busy one. We didn't accomplish all that I'd hope because Thursday got even busier then originally planned. I'll tell you more about that later.

Here's what we've been working on...

Bible:

Our lesson for the week was John baptizing Jesus and a bit on how John's life played out. Not all that pleasant for him in the end but his eternal rewards were great.

Math:

Mackenzie worked on multiplying by nines this week. Again, Mr. Demme had fabulous tricks for it. She got them down in a snap. I love, love, love Math-U-See. And for the record, I'm faster with my nines too. LOL

Science:

For the life of me I can't remember exactly we covered. How sad is that? LOL I could get up and look for you but I'm in a bit of a hurry. I should mention that we're behind in it. Whatever we're doing, I hope to get caught up tomorrow.

Language Arts:

Mackenzie did a lot of diagramming this week. She likes it. She probably wouldn't if FLL didn't set it up so nicely and take out any unnecessary writing. Nothing can get Kenzie grumbling more than "too much writing." Of course, the botttom of her paper was covered so she couldn't see the answers. LOL

Social Studies:

This our favorite subject, as always. We're still studying the beginnings of England's colonization of America. We made through the first and, reportedly, most difficult chapter of Landmark with no problems. And we're done with Chapter 2 as well. We like it and we're not even to the "good parts" yet. LOL

Mackenzie read The Courage of Sarah Noble and The Bears on Hemlock Mountain this week. She loved them, especially because both of the main characters were her age.

I started reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond to her. I'm excited because I loved this book when I was young.

She was also excited to connect things from these books to her more "formal" history readings and her history pockets.

Our History Pocket topic was "Building a Village" this week. There was some good stuff in there this week. I was going to take pictures for you. But I haven't. Yet! Part of the problem is we've still got one activity to do. This one requires extra supplies that we don't have and are going to require more legwork to find then I'm willing to give right now. So I'm going to adapt it so I can use things like, you know, pipe cleaners. LOL We'll be doing it this weekend.

The other reason I haven't taken history pocket pictures is because of Thursday. Yep, another teaser. =o)

Extras:

I'm sad to say that, for the second week in a row, Spanish got tossed under the bus. We've been making it to soccer though. I don't want to talk about art, which has been under the bus since last year.

Thursday

Okay, I'm ready for Thursday. We had a planned activity to go to a corn maze in the morning. A lovely fall activity that wouldn't take much time. Just a leisurely walk through the corn, some fun photo ops, some pumpkin treats afterward. Then back to the grind with school work.

I'm not going to give you all the details about the corn maze, except to say that it wasn't what I'd envisioned AT ALL. It was muddy, grrrr, and then there was Kayleigh. Apparently she doesn't like dead corn. AT ALL. I'm posting some pics in this post but the rest, which best show how the trip really was, will be in Kayleigh's post.

This last one's my favorite. I did a little halloweeny editing and stuck something fun in the background. Then I posted it on my Facebook page. It became my favorite when my mom called me and asked me to look closely at picture #9 cuz there was something I should see. I about peed my pants from laughing. Yes, I told her that I put it there after I was done laughing.

So we escaped the maze with our sanity in tact, but just barely. We went in the bakery and got the kids some pumpkiny treats and fed them their lunches that we packed. And yes we gave them the treats first. LOL

My friend then mentioned a great opportunity over at the library. One of the original 200 printed copies of the Declaration of Independence was going to be there this afternoon. Way cool! We were in.

We had time to kill so we took the kids to Chick Filet so they could play while we grown-ups ate. Then we headed to the library to get in line. We were sure there was going to be a huge line. Who wouldn't want to go see?

No line, no wait, barely anybody there. I was happy for us because that allowed for ample time to take whatever pictures, sans flash, that we wanted. I was a bit disheartened because I was shocked that so few people were interested in seeing it.

Obviously, this isn't the signed copy. This was one a Dunlap Broadside printed copy. There were 200 copies printed hours after Jefferson finished the final draft. There are only 25 left in existance. This particular one was discovered in 1989, in the back of a picture frame purchased a flea market in for $4. I wish I could get a deal like that at a flea market. LOL

The Dunlap Broadside copies actually pre-date the parchment/calligraphy copy that we think of when we picture the Declaration of Independence. That one wasn't finished until around August 1776 and then signed over a course of a few months. One day we'll had up to the National Archives to see that one.

It was a really neat experience.

Then we the kids asked to go into the library so we hung out there for a couple of hours, hence no work done. But lots of pictures. LOL

And if that weren't enough, we only had an hour at home before we had to head out to soccer practice. I'm exhausted!