Weekly Wrap-Up: Making Reading Fun & Rockets

Wrapping up another school week to motivate me to plan for the next... hahha, just kidding;)

Bible
The kids and I have still been working on our Thankful Stars. I love hearing what they are thankful for... "clean beds", "zoo animals", "sunny days" and "a beautiful world".

We also read through Psalm 19 as review.

And the kids are working diligently (when I remind them... lol!!) on their Awana lessons. We have just ONE Awana night left and all three of my kids have just ONE lesson left to complete their books... the pressure is on... ha haa!! No really, they do want to finish, so we completed a lesson and practiced last week and we'll be doing the same this week. And poor Anna has 5 verses in the last lesson (I think some are review!!).

Language/Reading
Anna completed her 2nd to last Spelling Unit and 4 Grammer lessons. I feel like I've not been giving the kids enough opportunities to write, but I was soo impressed with Anna's Spelling Writing Assignment this week (completed alone!). Maybe I don't have to "worry"!

**The circled words were from her Spelling Unit. Gotta love those "untold" stories!!**

Chris worked a little each day on his reading lessons. It's been soo nice for him to have a "motivation" before each session! He already asked if playing with Play-Doh could be his "treat" for next week (sounds great to me!!).

One reading assignment, fit Chris's personality. He loved the story and read more than I had planned for him in that session. And he was soo excited about it, he asked if he could make sentences and draw a picture for it!


I also have to share this... one thing I am trying.trying.trying. is to make reading (especially for Chris) very interesting. Our book provides a SOLID reading foundation but it doesn't have ANY pictures & no work pages... nothing that initially gets kids attention!! So this week, I made cards for Chris while he worked on "to,two & too"). Every time he read one of those words in a sentence he had to punch the correct card.... he loved it:)



Lydia also had a few reading sessions. I feel like she's ready for more, but I'm just not sure where to fit it in... I"m really hoping this summer I can MAKE time for Lydia's reading lessons!

On Friday, we closed the reading book and opened our High Five magazine. Lydia, Chris and I gathered on the couch to read it together. Anna soon joined in. I enjoyed the break and getting to "kick back" a bit. I have to confess though, I'm really bad at trying to pronounce the Spanish phrases, so I found the audio High Five online and the kids listened to that story:)And some of the others, again, too:)

Math
Anna finished all of her Saxon 2 math work this week.... YAY!!! I love finishing books;) She'll still be working on math subjects and math facts this summer.

Chris and I worked on a few math lessons, there were a couple of long ones that I split up into two days;) He likes math, so we'll keep at our pace so he will still enjoy it and not too much is pushed on him!

Lydia did puzzles, counting and skip counting with us, and ixl.com!

Science
So last week I confessed that I really was having a hard time making Science fun and that's really bad considering we are doing outer space related stuff. This week I tried to "step it up" a bit.

Our first Science day we did rockets and the first astronauts. We read and then watched a couple of rocket launches on YouTube. Then we watched a little re-enactment of the first man to go into space. Very moving. But my kids like the hands-on stuff.... so I attempted to explain how rockets work against gravity using balloons (totally recommended in the books we had been reading)! They loved it;)

Our 2nd Science lesson was on the first spacecrafts of NASA. I found a great elementary coloring book from NASA with all their spaceships, astronauts, etc! As I read from a book written by Buzz Aldrin, the kids colored the things he referenced... so nice how it fit together. We also watched another video on Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon.

After our Science lesson the kids ran upstairs to play. I heard Legos (yay, more learning, creating!!). Sure enough... a rocket appeared in the school room as I was cleaning up:)


History
This week we studied Henry V, the Hundred Years War and Joan of Arc. The kids did the coloring pages and map work. We also were pretty good about reading some extra sources about Henry V and Joan of Arc.

We made crowns to play a game from the activity guide. The kids had fun making the crowns but they were too excited to PLAY outside that they didn't want to play the game!! And then we played a guessing game after reading about Joan of Arc.

No pics, but a historical week;)

Other
Summer-itis has really set in around here.... the weather was really nice this week and after soo much rain last week we really hated being inside too long. So Monday we laid down the books early and went strawberry picking;)

Pic of the Week
I know you want to see Nate climbing or with fits full of strawberries chow-ing down;) But the pic I loved the most was this one


Chris' excited and happy expression after the deflating balloon went buzzing through the schoolroom:) Fun and excited learning...

moments like those that I am soo thankful I get to be a homeschooling mom:)

Linking up to Weekly Wrap Up:)