Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

This week went by too fast! That's because I was trying to plan out a birthday party for Miss M6 M7!! Yes, my baby girl is 7 now. I am still in denial from last year when she turned 6. I went all year still saying that she was 5.  

We had a Doctor Who themed party for her. I wasn't able to go all out like I wanted but we did have Dalek cupcakes & a *very* quick, last-minute-planned T.A.R.D.I.S cake. Apparently, I didn't think that 24 cupcakes were enough so I threw another box of cake mix in the oven & decorated it with leftover frosting. (Don't judge!) The cake wasn't even touched so we are saving that for tomorrow when it's her "real" birthday. Here's M7 with her new scooter from Grandma.

My father-in-law bought us a Nuwave Oven! It is so cool! We cooked chicken with potatoes & carrots in it last night & it was soooo delicious! I think we will be using this a lot!

• The week didn't start out all that great though. I had a lot of things on my mind & heart. You can read all about that here. 

• I wrote up my review of Keyboard Classroom. You can read about that here.

This is the last week of the Victorian Unit for J12. She will present her presentation to me by Friday. I cannot wait to see what she has come up with! That child is so creative. She wants to start on the Holocaust next so I need to start getting that ready.  

Hope you had a great week!

Thanks for stopping by!

Until Next Time,

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

  We had fun this week studying plants with M6 & L8 while J12 continued her Victorian Era unit study. Click below for free resources for each of those units! Next week we will be starting a unit on animals & continuing our Middle Ages unit w/ L8 & M6.

    J12 wrote her own blog post on here Thursday. You should check it out! We want this to be a weekly post for her & maybe even have a link-up for other kids/teens. How's that sound?? She's loves writing so I thought this would be great for her! If you know how I can get this started or of anyone else hosting a linkup for this please let me know in the comments!

  She is also still working on her Money Doesn't Grow On Trees Lapbook from Knowledge Box Central.


 

M6's art project....she made a large paper cut-out of herself! Just realized the arms are missing...maybe she isn't done after all??

   
   The hubs & I have been going through our things & de-cluttering/organizing. It's amazing how often we do this & STILL have so much stuff!! I'm even going through all of my boxes of school books to see what I really need to hold on to since it's all getting carried away..lol.

Thanks for stopping by!

Until Next Time,

   

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

It's been about a month since I wrote up a Weekly Wrap-Up post. I can't believe it! I have some posts up in between this time so instead of a 'weekly' wrap-up I can do a 'monthly' wrap-up. (I'll make it quick so I don't bore you!)  ;)

• Christmas was great for us. It usually lasts about a month since we have so much family that we can't get together with all at once! You can read all about that here & here. 

• We started back to school this week. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! Usually it takes a day or 2 to get things back in order after taking time off but we were in full swing Monday! 

• J12 started working on a Victorian Era unit (at her request) so I was able to throw together a Webquest for her. It's my 1st one ever & so far she loves it! When I heard, "Mom, you made this?!", it kind of made me feel awesome!! She has until the end of this month to finish it & has to come up with a Powerpoint (unless she can think of another way that we both agree on) to show all that she learned. She is reading The Importance of Being Earnest,  Sherlock Holmes, & The Time Machine. You can find all of them FREE for Kindle!

• L8 & M6 are continuing on with our Story of the World studies. 
  

• And also their science. I found an old 2nd grade textbook recently in my garage & thought I should put in some more 'formal' science lessons. I added a little lapbook to go with our chapter on plants. You can find that here ------Pinterest. And I found a cute little copywork book of a poem about plants but can't remember where I found it! :/

• J12 is still working on her Money Doesn't Grow On Trees Lapbook from Knowledge Box Central.

 

     I have been splitting my time lately between family, homeschool, housekeeping, & blogging a TON more! I'm still trying to get into a routine that works somewhat for us! Along with this blog, I also have my deals blog at Daily Deals From A Nerd Mom AND I am now blogging on freetailtherapy.com!

Thanks for stopping by!

Until Next Time,

 

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

This week was a crazy week. Between the hubs hurting his arm/chest & missing a few days of work, to me waking up with a sore shoulder & not being able to move it for a whole day (getting old I guess), M6 & J12 getting sick, & now me....we hardly got anything done!! 
Oh yes...almost forgot that I had run out of ink for my printer over the weekend & wasn't able to print anything until Wednesday morning!!

We were eventually able to do some free Christmas printables that I found online. You can find those:
-FREE Christmas Resources Round-up
-More Great Christmas Resources For Free

On Monday we received a package from our lovely friends from England! All sorts of baking gadgets (Doctor Who themed!!) & a few things were put away for M6's birthday party next month. She has been planning a Doctor Who party so these couldn't have been more perfect! We were all hoping to be able to use them but we haven't yet for reasons stated above. Yes, we will Christmas-up these cookies! Doctor Who & Christmas just go together. There is also a gingerbread T.A.R.D.I.S. in the plans. ;)

J12 has been wanting to do a Victorian-themed Christmas unit so I have been finding a bunch of goodies for that. I will post those at a later date when I have it all organized. Also, I am planning a Grinch unit for M6 & L8 next week from a blog post I found recently at Lemon Lime Adventures .

One thing that did get started this week was our review of Keyboarding Classroom. 

I set L8 up with this one & was surprised when he took to it & actually liked it! He's the one who fights me the most on school & lately it's been the worst. I only asked him jokingly if he wanted to do it & he said yes so I ran with it! As of now, my review copy is a single-user license but when he is finished with it I can use it for the girls if they wanted to. They do have options to buy dual or more licenses & the finger guards are free! (Which honestly our 1st thoughts were that they were disposal razors! haha)

I finished up my review for Write From History earlier this week. That was a lot of fun & we are planning to continue using that this year since it fits so perfectly with our history study!

I also started another Facebook page: Daily Deals From A Nerd Mom. You can find that & this blog FB page on the right side up top. ---->

Hopefully next week I will have some Christmas-y goodies to blog about! I cannot wait to get started on our cookie & T.A.R.D.I.S. decorating...plus I found a cute idea on Pinterest to make mini graham cracker houses! This would be a neat way for each of the kids to decorate their own house.

Happy Holidays!

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

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  This week we started a few different things. Since Thanksgiving is next week, we have been working on a large Thanksgiving Day Lapbook. It's a mix of a few different lapbooks that I pieced together, The Pilgrims Project Pack, Thanksgiving Day Speedy Lapbook, & Thanksgiving lapbook. This thing took 3 file folders!

  We also watched Squanto and the First Thanksgiving, Told by Graham Greene with Music by Paul McCandless & did some activities from my list of resources. You can find those here.
  Another thing we started this week is Write From Medieval History Level 1. This fits perfectly with our Middle Ages theme this year & the kids love the stories! Watch for my review on this in the next few weeks. It is manuscript for M6 & L8 so to have J12 involved I have her write it in cursive.
  You can see our volcano project that we did earlier this week here.

  The beginning of this week was very exciting for all of us. My baby sis had her 1st baby! A baby girl! We got to visit her Tuesday at the hospital & then went to her place to help get it ready before she came home. She is so tiny!

  Next week we will be doing some more activities from my list of resources, especially since M6 was on a roll & did this whole weeks worth in 2 days! We will also be getting the house more organized for Thanksgiving & of course we can't forget to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

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  We made it through another week! We did a few fun things together. I met a few awesome new friends that have given me some great advice. There will be a few more changes to J12's lessons to try to challenge her more in the upcoming weeks. This girl exhausts me but its fun!

   They had free drawing time. J12 is always, always, always drawing. She uses www.dragoart.com. It has free drawing lessons. L8 decided to use his time to write a letter but he did color the whole paper afterwards...which is strange because he HATES coloring! M6 drew 3 pics....a huge rainbow eyeball is one of them..lol.

   I thought we were done withe Ancient Rome studies but then decided to make a volcano project because of Pompeii. It was made with flour & water (equal parts, I used 2 C each) & brown paper bag. We will be painting it later this weekend & setting it off. Can't wait!

  Thursday, L8 surprised me by waking me up, made my coffee (!!) & toast w/ jelly, & even straightened the living room up for me! While I was eating, he looked at me & said, "Mom, I'm going to be really good today for you." My heart melted. He kept his word & even caught himself a few times before arguing with the girls! I kept hugging him & praising him all day when I would catch him doing something awesome. <3

  I have also noticed with L8 that the best way to get him to write is to write letters or notes to people. We have been working on his capitalizing & punctuation. Another thing all the kids love are mad libs. It's a great way to work on grammar skills! It has introduced nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. to M6 & we've made some crazy mad libs! One site we like is www.madtakes.com.  I went through my stash of homeschooling goodies & found a file folder games book. I made a few of them Friday for M6 & L8 (fractions, nouns, & a phonics one.) but forgot to take pics! oops

  Oh & almost forgot! I was complaining in my Facebook homeschool group, Schoolin' Swag, about my calendar. I hated having to pin & unpin it each month. So Friday I came up with a solution. All of my pocket charts are used so I couldn't use them for it. I hole punched each day card & they fit perfectly over the push pins! (fellow Whovians: take note of Nov. 23rd!)  ;)

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

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