in pursuit of wild things

Well I missed the weekly wrap-up last week. We had a date night last Friday and then on Saturday morning my husband left for Bristol. We were also celebrating his birthday last weekend and while we are out one of his friends calls with an invitation (and free ticket) to the NASCAR night race in Bristol…he’s always wanted to see a night race at the Bristol Speedway. With no help from me I think he had a pretty good birthday weekend…I even lost the cool Batman birthday card I got him (still lost) and had to give him one of the generic lame birthday cards I keep on hand for emergencies…

That was not the only cool thing that happened around here recently. Beautiful Feet Books recently had a notebook contest on their blog. As most of you know we love our Beautiful Feet Books curriculum. The kids all entered their favorite pieces they had completed in their notebooks and…We Got First Place!!! The kids were thrilled and way too excited to do their math so we went through the catalog and decided to spend our winnings on the maps for their geography study. We are going to be studying geography and Bible studies for our summer semester. Yes, I plan that far ahead…

Speaking of winnings…we came in third place in the Apologia contest I mentioned in my first weekly wrap-up. The nice folks at Apologia sent us a lab coat to wear during our experiments. Sparkles prefers to wear it while pretending to be a veterinarian. And I won a ten dollar gift card to Amazon from Math U See in a random drawing for answering some of their surveys. Normally, I do not win anything in contests…maybe I should buy a lottery ticket this week!

This week we went on a field trip to WPSD TV and Midwest Aviation in Paducah with a group of homeschooling friends. It was fun to see the news studio and learn a bit about broadcasting and local history. The studio is a lot smaller than I had imagined and so was the tiny closet they use as a dressing room. The tour was really interesting for older teenagers and adults but really boring for the younger crowd…Our next stop at Midwest Aviation was fun for my kids. They enjoyed a tour of the various planes and watching two planes take off as well as one plane land. Each kid also got a chance to sit in the pilot seat of one of the aircraft. I learned that Middle Boy is not a big fan of large group field trips and just tunes out. However, when he did get a chance to talk to our guide one-on-one he was full of questions and really animated. I think from now on we will avoid group field trips and just go exploring on our own…we’ll learn and enjoy the activity more.

In school this week we finished the Pocahontas book in our early American history studies and built the little film canister rocket (Apologia: Astronomy ) in our science studies. My husband ended up helping us with the rocket experiment and I’m glad he did…not so sure I could have done everything quick enough to make it work. I’ll post sometime soon about our Pocahontas unit.

Middle Boy making fudge

12 days of Christmas gift

poetry and breakfast