Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal (11/11/13)

   Not too much went on this past week. We mainly did a lot of our Ancient Rome study so we could finish that up before this week. We did a lapbook & activities I had found online. J12 is still reading Beowulf & L8 is trying out his first chapter book. He gets frustrated after a few pages so we take a lot of breaks.

   Our truck has been broke down since before Halloween & we thought we would have had it fixed by this weekend. That didn't work out so *fingers crossed* & lots of prayers that it does next weekend!

   This past weekend I decided to reorganize & rearrange the dining room/classroom.

This is an old pic & for some reason I cannot find a more recent one. Just imagine the playhouse gone & the dining table in its place like the 'after' pic below!

I love it this way! Now with the love seat in there we can cuddle while checking things out together on the pc or reading. (Ignore the pc on the floor next to the love seat....the hubs was working on it.)

      I need to put our world map back up & move the dry-erase board over from behind the tv to over by the bookshelf. I have a lot more wall space now!

      I broke out my rotisserie that has been put up for about 2 years! I forgot just how much we loved cooking chicken in it! I made a special spot on the counter so it's easier to get too..lol.

      This week, I want to look for a lapbook/file folder game, or something along those lines, for the different measurements of time for L8 & M6 to work on together. They have ideas but we need to get that down. If you have any ideas feel free to let me know in the comment section below!

       I also need to start planning the Thanksgiving dinner. I can't believe it's so close....we are still wearing shorts & flip flops here in FL so it's hard to get into the 'holiday spirit'.


Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!

Linked up with:

Ancient Rome Lapbook

We have a few more pieces to complete tomorrow but I went ahead & put it all together. This free lapbook unit is from HomeschoolShare.com. There are more pieces that we decided not to do so they are not shown here. You can't see it very good but the little pic in the corner of the cover page is from Doctor Who's Fires of Pompeii because..well, why not!!

Linked up with:
Think Tank Thursday, Thriving On Thursdays

Free resource finds of the week: Ancient Rome

We learned about the Fall of Rome during our Story of the World lessons so I wanted to dig a bit deeper with the kids about Ancient Rome. Here are some things we found....

• Ancient Rome lapbook from HomeschoolShare.com. We should be finished with this by Friday & then I will post pics.

• Rome Mini-Study for Young Learners from Hideaways in History.

• Play the Dig It Up:Romans online game.

• The Fall of Rome video.

• Visigoths sack Rome video.

• The Destruction of Pompeii from EyewitnessToHistory.com.

• Musician and artist Jeffrey Lewis sings about the factors that brought down an empire on History.com.

• Tour Pompeii.

• Gladiator: Dressed to Kill game.

• The Colosseum: Building the Arena of Death animation.

• Lots of funny videos from Horrible Histories about the Rotten Romans. These are our favorite!

• Awesome Notebooking pages.

• Lots of links for units.

Enjoy!

Linked up with:
Works-For-Me-Wednesday, Inspired Wednesday, Think Tank Thursdays, Thriving On Thursdays, Blessed Beyond A Doubt - Free Printable Friday, Frugal Homeschool Friday

Freebie: Apple for the Teacher: ELA Centers for Upper Elementary!

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Parents, teachers, & homeschoolers of 4th-6th grade students, here is a great freebie from Apple for the Teacher: ELA Centers for Upper Elementary at Educents!

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Diane had her BA in Elementary Education from the University of Iowa and her Masters in
Educational Technology from the University of Northern Iowa. This is her fourteenth year
teaching fifth grade. She currently teaches literacy and social studies in a fifth through eighth
grade middle school after spending her previous thirteen years in a 4/5 intermediate school.
You can visit her blog at: http://fifthinthemiddle.blogspot.com/ and her
store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Fifth-In-The-Middle

Also, while you're there, enjoy the other great deals they have up to 60% off!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Weekly Wrap-Up/The Homeschool Mother's Journal

So You Call Yourself a Homeschooler Link-Up

This week was a fun-filled one! We celebrated Halloween with some different activities. You can view that post here.

It was a short week for school since we really only did seat work Mon & Tues.

Wed, the hubs was off & we usually take a day off with him if he's home since it's too distracting for the kids & it keeps me sane! We just hung around the house & then hubs went out & bought our pumpkins for us to carve Thurs. We had our baking lesson while making Halloween cookies that night & music/PE class while listening/dancing to some fun Halloween-y music!

Thurs was Halloween so our art lesson for the day was pumpkin carving! It was also our science lesson as they pulled out the guts of the pumpkins & a math lesson while seeing how many seeds each pumpkin had. We also had PE & music lessons again while listening/dancing to more Halloween-y music.

Fri was our Catch-up On Housework day. (Though today you wouldn't have ever guessed!)

How I feel.

How my kids feel!

The kids also got with all of their neighborhood friends later in the day & they all traded candies.

Sat., today, is a quiet/rainy day here. The hubs took the kids to his dads house for the day & I am once again playing catch-up on housework & planning out our Thanksgiving Unit Study for the month. I miss them but it's nice to have some quiet time to myself.

Here is a great list of special days in November if interested. My awesome friend, Betty Jo, put a lot of hard work into it & I know I will be using it for my planning.

Next week I think we will put our SotW lessons on hold while we start our Thanksgiving/Pilgrim Unit. Can't wait to actually sit down & see what the kids are thankful  for each day!

Linked up with:

greatpeaceacademy.com