Weekly Wrap-up of Week 19

We've had a long, short, crazy, normal week around here.
I'm sure you know what I mean:)

We spent a long weekend at my parents house and visiting family and arrived home late afternoon Monday but since I had made a quick trip to the library before we left I was stocked up with good audio books to listen to while driving. We caught up on our chapters in Wind in the Willows and hubby especially enjoyed the chapter on Mr. Toad.

Unfortunately a trip like that pretty much wipes me out and the rest of the week I've been trying to catch up on sleep, laundry and dishes and trying to get the smoke smell removed from my poor oven after a seriously gone wrong oven clean involving lots and lots of choking smoke filling our house and necessitating a removal of all children for a few hours. (note to self...do NOT clean the oven in the winter, do NOT spill cream into your oven)

So let's see.....we finished reading Tree in the Trail last week and started reading Seabird this week. I printed off a couple notebooking pages and we kind of sort of filled them out. I definitely need to plan this ahead so it doesn't take so much time and let the kids do the research on their own or frankly I just need to forget this extra step.

Due to tiredness and lack of motivation we didn't get much of the foundational subjects accomplished, like math, phonics and copywork but just keeping up with reading our books was enough.
Thankfully the weather has been wonderful all week so we've gone for a few walks and the kids have spent tons of time digging, running, climbing and playing in the yard. A blissful break from the cold although it has included plenty of mud.

On Thursday Mr. Dad loaded the upper 5 kiddos and took them on a "mommy needs a break" trip to a local park. This is more of a nature park that runs along a couple of creeks so of course they had a muddy enjoyable time:) They did explore around and found horse, dog, and coyote tracks and received an impromptu lesson on following and identifying tracks and of course told it all back to me in various forms after returning home. I was especially impressed with Wes (5yo) who drew a picture of the horse tracks.

All in all....we made it! The week is over and it's on to the next thing...until Monday.

I'm rethinking our book schedule and will probably be cutting Pilgrim's Progress out since we will be covering it again next year. I may look into using Pilgrims Progress told to the Children or just take the audio version that we have along with us on some trips. I get the most complaints from this book but I know good and well that they do really enjoy it. I think it would work better for a longer listening period than restricting how much we listen to to keep on schedule. Maybe I'll just slip it in during Quiet Time one of these days:)