Weekly Wrap up – Week 5

Let me start this weekly wrap-up by saying this was a tough week. I can’t pinpoint any one reason, I think we are all just itching for our upcoming end-of-term break! It didn’t help that I got sick Friday (stomach bug) and haven’t quite gotten back to normal yet…

This week did, however, have some fun highlights that I am happy to share:

Being that both of the boys are studying plants right now, they were able to collaborate on a science lab this week.

Our lab involved germinating bean sprouts and planting them. The above photos were taken after the beans had been wrapped in wet paper towels and stored in a baggie for 24 hours. It’s hard to see, but on some of them, there was evidence of the shells breaking open in order to let the growing sprouts out.

These photos were taken yesterday before we planted our sprouts in dirt and labeled them to observe over the next week or so. You can see that each bean has a fully formed sprout growing out of it. We did a lima bean, a lentil, and a great northern so we could compare the differences. Now they are in their clear containers. We set them out in front of the patio door for a few hours each day so that they can get the sunlight they need to make food and grow!

Right now, Drew is doing Science the Well-Trained Mind way, utilizing a book called “How Nature Works” and our Usborne Internet-linked Science Encyclopedia. I will be getting a few Apologia books this coming week to try out, and one of them is the Elementary Botany book. So we are excited to try it out! Isaiah is using the “Great Science Adventures” books to do Biology this year. I had never heard of these, but they were recommended via TWTM, and once I saw that they incorporated Dinah Zike’s foldables, I was sold! This past week was his first week, and he really seems to be enjoying it so far. Next week I will show you some pictures of the minibooks he has been working on.

Jazz had a bit of a slow paced week, as I had found some things that she needed some extra help with as I was grading her work last weekend. So we took some time to do some extra practice with divisibility in Math and did some extra sentence diagramming worksheets. I tried to find some fun, different ways to review these things, but sometimes you just need to practice, practice, practice!

Joey has been really good this past week and I think he is starting to adjust better to entertaining himself while we are getting schoolwork done. Daddy was home on Wednesday and Thursday, as usual, and brought some laughter to our evenings…

Friday, we didn’t do school because I was miserably sick. I am still fighting off a mean stomach bug and I’m hoping by tomorrow I will be back to normal. Luckily, no one else has shown any signs of getting sick, so here’s hoping!

See you next week!