Weekly Wrap-Up... Summer Week 3

It has been a good week, but it went by so quickly! We had a lovely swim party this week, where Cyrus taught himself to swim under water (he could already do the dog paddle) and today we are all about parks. Right now they are off at the park with their Nonna, learning about baseball.

Cyrus read a lot in the first Harry Potter book this week. He is on a break from Rick Riordan books at the moment. He has also dipped back into his Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, following our meeting and signing with author Jeff Kinney. He completed a jet model this week, and played Wizard 101 on the computer. He also had his piano lesson, and is working diligently to capture his own tunes in writing with Noteflight (now if I could just get him to practice his assigned pieces a little more!) In addition, he worked some more on learning computer animation with Pivot Stickfigure Animator.

Cassia did a couple of ClickN'Kids Phonics lessons this week, and read another Nora Gaydos Now I'm Reading book. She spent a little too much time watching tween shows from Australia on our Netflix, so I'm nipping that in the bud for next week.

We played one of our new games... Sum Swamp, and had lots of fun with it. We also played Uno. We read more of Peter and the Starcatchers, and a couple of chapters from All of a Kind Family. We listened to a lot of classical music on the radio, and watched another couple of episodes of Wild China. We watched A Wrinkle in Time and talked about what was different from the book... in the end, we all agreed we liked the book more than the film.

There has also been time for playing outside, watering the garden, watching birds, and eating watermelon. And playing on the Wii Fit when it is too hot to go out much. There's been doll-and-stuffed animal play, a couple of little crafts, and of course our water dragon to tend to (okay, Cyrus's water dragon) as well as the snakes, cats, and dogs. And time to mess around with my plans for next year - I'm trying to loosen up where I said I would!

Next week, I hope to be a little more organized with more follow-through. I have made new wipe-off "chore" (for lack of a better word) charts for the kids, so that I don't have to constantly remind them of each little thing, but instead can say "Go check your chart", and have set down rules about computer and TV time. I realized - duh - that if Cassia did a lesson a day on the ClickN'Kids site, she'd make it a good way through the 100 lessons by the end of summer. And I want time to try Totally Tut and Pizza Fractions. And time to read more stories, get ready for our monthly Eating Around the World potluck, and Spiral Scouts!