Third Week of School

This was our 3rd week of school. We had to squeeze work into 3 days, since Thursday was our field trip and Friday was TOG Co-op. But things went pretty well. We started working on a papier mache mummy case, and it is coming out great. I'll have pictures once we finish. We read more about ancient Egypt and the pharaohs and pyramids this week, labeled maps of ancient Egypt with the names of cities, and watched a video from National Geographic. To review the vocabulary words from TOG this week, I typed out the list of words with definitions to read over together. Then I made a Word Search and Crossword puzzle, using http://www.puzzlemaker.com/. Next week I'll probably make a BINGO game to review all 3 weeks of our Ancient Egypt study.

Co-op was a lot of fun again yesterday. Both Amanda's 8th/9th grade group (which I co-teach) and Jason's 4th/5th grade group do a Jeopardy game as review each week, and the kids are loving that! My group did presentations this week ( just to our small group) on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and I was so pleased at the great job they all did! Then we discussed the history and literature reading for the week, read the Pageant of Philosophy dialogue that is included in the Tapestry of Grace curriculum, and started work on our tomb paintings ~ Ancient Egyptian designs from a coloring book, which we traced onto newsprint using an overhead projector, and will then paint and display at our Unit Celebration in October.

Next week we'll be adding a couple of more things to our weekly schedule. Amanda's Biology class starts Tuesday morning. It is held once a week and is taught by a homeschool dad who is a professor in the Botany dept. at NC State. The are using Apologia's Exploring Creation With Biology , which is the same book my older kids all used. The Apologia books are great for high school science ~ they are written for homeschoolers and come from a Biblical worldview. Tuesday is also the first day of Eric's American Literature class, which is being taught by a former homeschool mom who used to teach English at a local Christian school. She and her husband also happen to be Eric's Sunday School teachers this year, so that should be interesting! Jason will be starting his science class this week as well. Last year, he met with his best friend, Nathan, and Nathan's mom, Tammy, for science two afternoons a week, and they worked through Considering God's Creation. This year they are using Jeannie Fulbright's Exploring Creation With Botany , part of Apologia's Young Learner's Series.

We still haven't started Latin or Write Shop, but it is coming. Easing in is the way to go, at least for me.

Amanda's volleyball team had 2 games this week. We played against Cary Christian's lower middle school team on Tuesday, and won very easily. It was not a good match-up, as the Cary girls were apparently all first-year players with barely a week or two of practice under their belts. Our coach and girls on the bench all started cheering for them to hit the ball! Yesterday we played against Franklin Academy, and it was an excellent contest!! Our teams are very evenly matched, and both teams played hard, with our girls pulling out the win! Hooray for the Eagles!