Weekly Wrap Up: The First Week

• 
• Tweet
• Sumo

• 
• Tweet

In our Life this Week…

We did very little besides adjust to school, fit things in around school, and play hooky—all school-related activities.

When I took half a day off to visit my distant doctor (and buy a beautiful dress on the way), the kids all neglected their schoolwork.  And what did they eat?  Marshmallows microwaved with chocolate chips and mixed with corn flakes!  They gave Miss 10 Doritos for lunch, and that’s all she had until I came home to feed her properly!  Well, we had liver, bacon, and onions for supper that day….

In our homeschool …

So this was our first week of school.  At times it was overwhelming, but later in the week I found myself strangely bored while the kids worked independently.  Not that I didn’t have prep work and reading to do, but there was nothing interactive that I could do with them.  Weird!    On the plus side, that meant that I did have some time to hang out laundry, pick up the house, clean the mud off our garlics, and so on.

The girls worked hard, most of the time.  We’re really learning a lot from a Greek phonics program, The Greek Alphabetarian from Trivium Pursuit.  So cool!  We managed to decipher a real Greek word just by knowing the letter sounds even though we only know a few of them so far.

In our garden…

It’s either school or gardening; we cannot really manage to do both well, and I suspect that may be part of the reason why the girls wanted to start school early.  I’ll have to figure out a way to make both work, though.  We did freeze some elderberries, preparing them while sitting under our butternut trees.

We are eating pears, parsley, beans, raspberries, elderberries, apples, salad greens, onions, garlic, carrots, cucumbers, radish seed pods, and tomatoes.

We still have hollyhocks, red poppies, pink double poppies, purple coneflower, black-eyed Susans, day lilies, sedum, and yarrow of all colors and finally we’ve had the first few blue morning glories.

 In the kitchen… Apple pancakes.  Home-made fries.  Fresh vegetables.  Liver with onions and bacon.  Fish soup from scratch, using fish scraps (but no heads).  It was a wonderful soup, but deboning fish scraps takes forever.

You know you’re eating a lot of garden-fresh vegetables if there are no veggies for supper when a severe thunderstorm keeps you from going out to the garden.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Eating apples and pears straight from the tree.
• Spending time with friends and family, eating, chatting, enjoying each other’s company.
• Swimming in the pool with the kids.
• Getting caught in a thunderstorm with Miss 10 and taking refuge in the library, dripping wet.
• The long, pretty, historical drive to my doctor and the beautiful dress I bought in a village on the way.
• The mink (or martin or fisher) I saw running across the road.  I can see why people like mink coats; its fur was amazing.
• Sitting under the butternut trees to enjoy Miss 20’s elegant cake.
• Watching a tiny frog on a window screen snatch bugs from a spider web.  The spider was upset and the two of them got into a bit of a scuffle.

Questions/thoughts I have…   There is so much to learn and explore in this beautiful world that God has given us!  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the fascinating things just waiting to be discovered and thought about (and the fact that there are only a few decades left and so much else that needs to be done), but I’m sure we will keep on learning about God’s amazing actions and creation forever.

Fitness… Again my steps averaged well over 10,000 a day, although I did have to work hard at it, now that sedentary schoolwork has begun.  Rest most afternoons.  No other exercises.  Lots of veggies and fruit, but no yoghurt.

Things I’ve been working on…

• Omnibus I and VI, learning Greek phonics, planning Canadian History studies.
• Eating from the orchard and garden.
• Swimming with the kids.
• Freezing fruit.

We’re watching and playing…

Sherlock Holmes (Miss 13 and Miss 15), Settlers of Catan.  I bought Stand and Deliver about an inner-city calculus teacher but have not yet watched it.

I’m reading… Proverbs.   I finished A Simple Change  and the must-read book The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good  (links to my reviews), and am still reading Mathematics: Is God Silent?, The Discoverers, Standing on the Promises, The Passionate Mom, and 1000 Gifts.

Reading Aloud… The children and I are reading Esther.  We just realized that the whole court must have known what was up before King Xerxes did, because Esther sent messages by one of her servants.  Imagine the tension as all the courtiers realized the queen was pitted against her husband’s favorite, and he did not know!

When my husband is home for meals we read Acts.

I’m grateful for …. An easy start to the school year.  Apples.  Our pool.

Quote or link to share….  A wonderful Canadian History reading list, mostly for the elementary grades.  And this must-see page.

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .