Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Apparently Missed Thanksgiving

I decided to do something different with the Wrap-Up this week.  I decided to post it early instead of late.  How's that for new and different?

It was a pretty alright week.  The worst part was when we were out looking for a turkey cookie cutter on Tuesday and couldn't find one.  Here it is, a week and a half before Thanksgiving, and I somehow missed the entire holiday.  I know my mind isn't as sharp as it used to be but I didn't think I could miss an entire holiday.

But the proof is in the shopping.  2 A.C. Moores, 2 Bed, Bath, & Beyonds, a Michaels, Walmart, and a Harris Teeters later, I had not found ONE, SINGLE, THANKSGIVING ITEM.  I wasn't just missing cookie cutters, I couldn't find anything for the holiday.  What's up with late?

On the cookie cutter end I found lots of Santas, snowmen, stockings, candy canes, valentine hearts, flowers, Easter eggs, footballs (closest thing to T-Day), and dog bones.  Because clearly dogs having cookies is more important than Thanksgiving.  They've also got more costumes than toddlers and more aisles than baby supplies but that's a whole 'nother rant.

I got a turkey cutter on my last shopping trip.  Of the 4 different holiday cookie-cutter packs, one of them had a turkey thrown in there.  Just one?  Maybe it's because Thanksgiving isn't commercial enough yet?

On the bright side, I now know that if I want Thanksgiving items I need to buy them in late August or early September.  I put that in my phone because I'll never remember that.  It's going to beep and remind me on August 25.

But, despite the never-ending shopping trip, it's Thursday and we're not only caught up with school, we're slightly ahead.  I am completely confident that we'll finish what's left of tomorrow's work tomorrow.  (Who wants to bet that something happens and we don't get it done?  It's probably gonna happen. LOL)

Here are the highlights...

Bible

We're reading through the book of 1 Samuel.  It's pretty much review, as she just studied it at church, but we're going a little more in depth.

Math

Mackenzie had her second unit test of the year and did great.  I believe she missed one and it has probably scarred her first-born, perfectionist self but I'm happy with it.  Her new lesson was on finding the area of trapezoids.

Science

We're finishing up our unit on mating and eggs.  Some of the mating rituals had us in stitches.  This week she made a comic strip on a bird's life starting in the egg up to the point the bird has it's own clutch.  Mackenzie had a lot of fun being silly with it.

We also have a couple of experiments in the works.  The first one involves candling the changes that occur in an egg as it rots.  So that will be ongoing for the next couple of weeks.

Her second experiment was for her to design an experiment that will show  if an egg, a porous, object would absorb water.  She really surprised me by coming up with a great idea.  I was honestly expecting her to flip out and cry about how this was too hard.

She decided to submerge the egg in water for a week.  When I asked her how she'd be able to tell whether or not the egg absorbed anything she had 3 thoughts; She could weigh the egg before and after, measure the water level and check the difference after a week, or crack the egg open and look for water. She decided to go with her third option.  But then she wasn't sure she'd able to see the water so she added food coloring to the water.

I was impressed.  Especially after I checked the Apologia website to see what they did.  Her second and third options were the ones that were tested by the author.  A proud mommy moment.

Now we just have to wait and see if her hypothesis' are correct.

Social Studies

She's still doing great with geography.  We're using The Star-Spangled State Book and she still calls it fun.  The only thing she doesn't like about are the words she has to look up.  In a dictionary...GASP!

She read The Story Of Thomas Alva Edison  in history.  She was fascinated by all that he accomplished and thrilled that he shared a birthday with her little sister.

We also started discussing the reconstruction and Andrew Johnson's time in office.  Mackenzie was very disappointed with how the reconstruction was handled by the Radical Republicans.  I think she was really hoping for something positive about our history after the war and the treatment of the Native Americans.  But like with all things, you have to take the bad along with the good.

Extras

She is still doing awesome with her piano lessons.  Last week she started playing more than one note at a time.  She sounds great!

We started our composer study on Tchaikovsky.  I choose him first because we're going to our annual viewing of The Great Russian Nutcracker in a few weeks.  We really enjoy his music and Mackenzie has decided that her ultimate "piano goal" is to be able to play his Concerto #1 one day.

We've been slacking in our art lessons lately but we did 2 lessons from How to Teach Art to Children this week.  Her first assignment was to draw simple outlines of objects.

The second assignment was to create a shape design using felt shapes (circles, squares, and triangles) and then copy the design onto paper.  Now way was I making shapes for that so I thought I'd be smart and just grab the tanagrams.  Which would've worked great had I grabbed the tanagrams instead of the pattern blocks.  =o)

It was all great in the beginning.  She happily created her design and all was going well.  Then the drawing began and so did the meltdown which resulted in her crying under the table.  Copying the design with the tanagrams would've been simple, but drawing the intricate design she made with the pattern blocks was too much for my perfectionist first-born.

Eventually, she finished but it didn't turn out quite like we'd envisioned.  It was then I realized my error. LOL  Opps!  My bad.  She can laugh about it now.  Maybe we'll do it again.  The right way.  Or not.

And yes, I took a few pics of the meltdown.  I'm that kind of mom.  One day I plan on making a scrapbook filled with crying children. LOL

And that was our week.  Except for Friday, which hasn't happened yet.  The plan is piano, school, and a trip to the park with friends.  Yay!

Be sure to visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see how others fared this week.  That is, once the link-up is posted.  Sometime tomorrow.