Weekly Wrap-Up: The Not-Back-to-School Celebration

It was back to school week for the public school kids but, for us, it was back to the museums week. We  have patiently been looking forward to the day when the museums would be empty again and that day finally arrived. This year, for our Not-Back-to-School celebration, we choose soup at UNO's for lunch and an afternoon at The Children's Museum of Virginia. It was a beautiful afternoon. We practically had the place to ourselves. We saw more staff members then other visitors. Just the way that we like it.  Woot!


Public school wasn't the only thing that started back up this week. It was back to music and art classes for the kids. And Kayleigh is finally old enough to take a class herself, preschool music. She was so excited to finally do smething besides wait for Mackenzie to finish her classes. She came out of her class proudly holding her very own music book. So cute. Mackenzie is continuing on with art and private piano. She came out of class with a list of new piano books that she needs. She absolutely must stop progressing at such a rapid rate. lol With music class came lunch in the YMV lunch room. Yay a bunch of noisy kids acting weird. Just like public school. I guess I can check off socialization.

Mackenzie

Mackenzie's load hasn't changed much. We still haven't added in our Sonlight studies. I've decided to hold it off until after our move in a few weeks. No sense starting a great book only to have to put it on hold.

Our latest science lesson was on whales and it was totally fascinating. Obviously, we knew that whales were huge but some of the comparisons that the book made were mind blowing. The heart of the a blue whale is the size of a VW beetle. Holy cow! And the blood vessels are large enough for a baby to crawl through. Those examples really put the size of these creatures in perspective. I've decide that we will be going on a whale watching trip this winter when the whales are "in town." We're super excited about that.

We're almost finished with our Monet artist study. This week one of her assignments was to make a copycat painting of one of his works. She did an amazing job! Especially considering that she was using water colors instead of oils. You can see how it came out at the end of the post. I had no idea how talented she was at art until I started paying for her to take lessons. lol

Kayleigh

Kayleigh plugged full speed ahead after her mini-break last week. She got right back into all her learnin'.

I made a bit of a change for Kayleigh in regards to her All About Reading lessons. Basically the book is divided into three sections: Capital letters, lowercase letters, and phonics. She is currently in the second section, letter 'd', but she is more than ready for the phonics portion. So I decided to do both at the same time.  She's doing them 4 days a week instead of two. The lessons are really short and she loves them so she didn't even notice. Since we weren't very far into the second section, it won't take long to get those sections lined up.

The fun part about the third section is that they have a "Tasty Alphabet" activity for each lesson. Since we're quickly working through a-d, and we covered a/b this week, we made applesauce in the crockpot. Both the girls helped chop the apples and the both certainly enjoyed eating it.

She finally got to work in her Handwriting Without Tears book. Unfortunately it was just a coloring activity and she was over coloring for the day. lol Not that she likes it on a good day. We also practiced her grip and learned a song about the proper way to hold a pencil. Or crayon in her case. She liked that better than the coloring.

We read lots of fun stories with our Sonlight reading and she got to pretend to be a "hotel waitress" to go along with one of our books. She was not interested in pretending to be the "hotel maid" though. lol Smart girl. I'm hoping this book, Things People Do, has a section on massage because I should would like my feet rubbed. ;o)

Other Stuff

Not only did we head back to music class but soccer has started up too. I'm a little nervous about how Mackenzie's ankle holds out since she broke it earlier this summer. She was given the go ahead but she's pretty wimpy like her momma. She's only had one practice so it's hard to gage. Her first games are this weekend so we'll see how it goes. Kayleigh also starts soccer tots this weekend. She usually refuses to play so I'm not expecting much. We stopped bringing her before the season ended last year because she never wanted to do more than play on the playground. I wouldn't be sad if that happened this year either. lol Mackenzie's games are at 9 & 10 and Kayleigh doesn't play until noon. It's a long morning with a lot waiting.

As promised, here is Mackenzie's beautiful watercolor. She painted it in about an hour. I loved watching her use the techniques she's been learning in art class. I couldn't have taught her all of that. I like to look at art, not create it. lol

 Kayleigh did some watercolor painting too because she didn't want to be left out. She's more of an abstract girl though. She also made a self-portrait as part of her Artistic Pursuits lesson. First she drew herself and then she glued on some "hair and a dress." She loved it.

And that was pretty much our week. Did you do anything special to celebrate not going back to public school?


Linking to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Preschool Corner, Photo Collage Friday, and the Homeschool Mother's Journal.