TGIF...

Really. It has been one of those weeks, you know? We didn't get nearly as much done as I hoped.

What We Did Accomplish
The Boy wrote a great descriptive paragraph about Mustangs (the car, not the horse), and worked through more of AoPS Prealgebra. This is a very dense program, but he is loving the discovery method, and really got the hang of distributive properties this week. He read a few sections from chapter 2 in his Conceptual Physics book. He worked on an animation project in Blender, wrote a blog entry, helped build a new couple of shelves in his bedroom, set up a habitat for and named his new green iguana (Hyperion, in case you're wondering), read from The Phantom Tollbooth, did a painting, read from his Odyssey Magazine, and probably worked on several other projects I am forgetting at the moment.

The Girl moved from Saxon to Math Mammoth (which I secretly much prefer) after half a particularly frustrating lesson in the former. She then happily completed two pages in the latter, so I think we'll be sticking with this for a while. Technically, by Math Mammoth standards, she is "behind" about a year, but I'm okay with that, as she'll still be ready for prealgebra in 8th, just like her brother. Anyhow, when the Saxon lesson brought my math-loving girl to tears, I figured we should try something else, and thankfully I bought the entire MM Blue series several years back. She also completed 3 lessons in Reading Horizons, wrote a short story, did a painting, browsed through her new Faces Magazine issue (on Greece), did a photo session for roller derby, and helped out with cooking.

We finished the history section on ancient Crete, and moved into mainland Greece. I hope to start reading Black Ships Before Troy very soon, though we did not manage to finish The Twenty One Balloons yet. I almost forgot--I gave them a "test" on the continents and oceans, just to make sure, and they both knew all of it, which made me feel marginally better as we haven't really done physical geography very much.

And To Be Accomplished
This weekend we're heading out to the local, small Renaissance Faire for a day of fun. The kids always do the quest guides there, which involve asking different merchants and demonstrators questions about history, finding certain locations and/or objects, and so forth. They of course also get to play games, meet the Queen, and have a generally great time! Unfortunately, for the first time we've gone, M will not be with us as he will be at work, so we're meeting some friends there instead.

We're also talking about schooling on Saturdays rather than Mondays, as Mondays are just so tight between work, college, fencing, etc. I know, I know... I've now robbed my kids of their weekends, but honestly, it doesn't seem to be that bad. We might be able to make light Mondays work still, most of the time (not on my staff meeting days), so we'll see.

I need to work on scheduling overall. We didn't do any language arts "extras" this week, and no zoology besides watching The Blue Planet. And next-to-no read alouds. I just need to be better organized. Either that, or I just need to allow us to pursue things in my What If fashion, since the kids do seem to get a lot of their own projects going despite my disorganization.

And that's pretty much it for homeschooling. We also took the car in for a smog test, checked out the local skate park (on scooters), and The Boy won 5 out of 8 bouts at Wednesday's fencing practice. M is slowly settling into the new job, finding it very challenging on banquet days (so much prep, and so many dirty dishes!). My classes are easy-peasy so far... no 15-20 page papers this semester (phew!!!).

Hope you all had a good week!