Weekly Wrap Up {Back to School}

This was our first week back to school.  I did mention that I am going to a more year round schedule, right?  I have been thinking about this for the last couple of years but just couldn't get out of the public school calendar mindset.  Little by little I have been doing my own thing and this year I am just going for it.  I have come to the conclusion that my kids and I do better with a little more structure and we need the shorter more frequent breaks. 

I purposely set the goals at a minimum this week.  I did not add everything back for the kids this week  They were not exactly thrilled to be schooling in July but it is too hot for them to run around outside all day and they have plenty of time after school to play.  They adjusted to this just fine. 

We started our much anticipated new curriculum Trail Guides to Learning - Paths of Exploration, which went well.  We are enjoying the reading materials, the discussion and the activities.  My girls were both not too excited to be doing copywork again, they would rather work out of a grammar book to be honest.  They did not love all of the writing activities either.  But as the week went on they started getting in the groove of things and all was well.

Trail Guides to Learning - POE is just a little different of a layout than what we were doing before so everyone needs to adjust a little - not only is it normal with a new curriculum it is normal in starting a new year.
This year we have children in 7th, 4th, 1st and Pre K.  The way that I usually work our day is Bible along with breakfast and then I work with the youngest on up the oldest on things they do on their grade level.  Then we would do the rest of our group work together, this seems to work good for us so far.

Not only did we get our feet wet with our new curriculum this week we managed to end up at our county library for a science show.  I was swinging by the library to pick up from books and movies when I saw a friend who mentioned that the Maryland Science center was doing a show there today.  I had no clue about it but was very thankful that the Lord lined us up with being there at the right time.  All of my kids really enjoyed the show and 2 of them even got to go up and volunteer with the experiments. 

Another fun activity that we started this week was an American Girl Summer Book Club.  One of my friends and I are hosting it here at my house every Friday afternoon this summer.  We had six girls this afternoon, which was a perfect size.  They read the book before they came and then we discussed the book, made 2 crafts, had a snack to go along with the book and had the girls color a picture for their book club notebooks.  The all had a really great time! 

Then to end our wonderful week, this evening the kids and I scattered black and white patches all over our clothes, put on some fake paper ears and went to Chickfila for Cow Appreciation Day. I think we are going to have to make this a new family tradition! 

Anyone else start back to school this week?