The Week (3) in Pictures - 2011:

Walkin' on Sunshine!

What?  Don't you have kitty-cat breaks at your house?

Written work continues apace with all the aforementioned texts.  We covered Islam this week with the United Learning video series.  There's no lit/writing class next week, due to the Labor Day holiday, so he's stretching out his work in that class.  He has another set of study questions, a friendly letter, and another writing prompt for a paragraph (3 choices) due to finish up his study of Call of the Wild.

Almost finished with Volume 6 of History of US (and WHERE did those long, skinny legs come from, anyway?)

Reviewing Spanish with Live Mocha on Mom's laptop (on Mom's bed - but then making that bed just seems an invitation for someone to jump on it - happens EVERY day....)

Last Bubble-ology Lab!  We chose the garage this time in hopes of avoiding breezes that would pop our bubbles prematurely....

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!  Aren't the colors beautiful?  And the formula for the color sequence leading up to a pop really does work perfectly, too!

Taking a little quiz at the kitchen table over terms used in the course of this study, as well as working a practice problem on calculating the volume of a bubble sphere....

Enjoying lovely weather for the beginning of fall soccer practice....

I laid out a luncheon tea for him on Wednesday this week....

He has been reminding me (vigorously) that I hadn't done a tea for him since he was very little.  He is forgetting that I was involved in three large, group teas for a theatre group in which he and his brother were involved for several years when his brother was in middle school through ninth grade.  I think he was a little jealous that I did a tea for our ladies' group at church last week.  SO, I needed to use up the leftovers, anyway, and we didn't have to leave the house for any reason on Wednesday - tea time seemed like a win/win....

A good time was enjoyed by all.  Tea in your pj's is always fun, isn't it?

On Thursday we ate out before co-op classes began.  He got into the PE class he wanted to add, so we won't have time for this anymore for a while!  He's such a social butterfly now that he has to talk on the phone during lunch.  See that woven bracelet on his arm?  A GIRL made it for him at theatre camp.  She's going to audition for JR. Company (a year-long theatre group) along with him, too, so there will be MUCH more time for socializing....  OY....

We both are getting our hair cut on Saturday.  Just couldn't get over there before then....  I hope we don't have any accidental trips or falls before then; I'm as shaggy as he is....

Co-op Home Ec. and Physical Science seem to be going well.  I was instructed that we had to find a funny instance of junk science reporting for today's class in order to make a girl laugh (did I say OY?)  I was also instructed that I am not to tell anyone that he made a rice filled pin cushion last week (and quite well, by the way, for a first project).  "But what's wrong, aren't there any other boys in the class?"  Yes, as a matter of fact, it's all boys save for one poor, lone girl (LOL)....  His first sewing kit is a tackle box....

What are we reading this week?

He finished Call of the Wild and read "The Musgrave Ritual" from the Illustrated Junior Library edition of of The Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle.  He's also reading The Hound of the Baskervilles (another Sherlock Holme's adventure by Doyle).

                        

I read from Haywood's Atlas of Past Times regarding America at the time of the Civil War and on into the opening of the 20th century.  We continued with the Marrin book.  I read a simple (but good) book entitled From Slave to Civil War Hero, about the life of Robert Smalls.  I had not read about him before.   I also began reading The Long Road to Gettysburg, Murphy, because I was getting complaints about not reading enough about the battles.... 

         

He continued with Roll of Thunder....

I read some from a volume of Emily Dickinson's poetry that we own....

He has been reading on his own time from many of my husband's civil war volumes.  Books I've found around the house include:

Fighting Men of the Civil War, William Davis

The Civil War: A Complete Military History, Douglas Welsh

The Civil War: Gettysburg, The Confederate High Tide, Champ Clark (Time-Life series)

I know he was taping the History channel programming "Gettysburg" last night, also, so that he can watch it this weekend.  He's gearing up for Perryville the second weekend of October.  It's a national

re-enactment this year and he's excited....

For science next week, we'll be starting an exploration of simple machines, moving into making Archimede's screws and Rube Goldberg devices.  I started him with some reading on the topic and he finished:

Castle Under Siege!  Simple Machines, Andrew Solway

Inclined Planes, Anne Weisbacher

Sensational Science Projects with Simple Machines, Robert Gardner

His fall chemistry lab began on Friday and they did chromatography work from the Illustrated Guide:

So that's our week - fall semester is almost in full swing!  I'm still working on field trips, but those are falling into place, too....  Hope all is going well at your house,

Regena