It's FRIDAY!

It's Friday! Ted's off work for a 4-day weekend, and we're preparing for the first field trip of the school year. It's a "Wade in the Water" class at Wegerzyn Gardens. The older kids have play dates scheduled with friends for the afternoon, so it should be fairly quiet around here. Ted plans to take Kenna with him when he runs some errands during Lucan's nap time, so I'll have a chance to think about our menu and grocery shopping list--hopefully the last time I will do this before our big Williamsburg/D.C. trip!

The last three days we practiced our daily schedule, minus some key school activities, LOL. But the transitions seemed to go well, and that was mostly what I was wondering about, particularly the time Kenna would be spending with her older sibs. I'm hopeful that we have a workable routine, but we'll see how things go when we have a full day's worth of school to do! This week we just eased back into math (although there was nothing "easy" about that first day--oh, my, I really should have kept on the kids all summer!) and read the one read-aloud book from our Sonlight Core 2 that we missed last year. It was well worth reading! (The Apprentice, for those familiar with the core.) Charis wrote on her blog about the Bible Bee experience during her language arts time, while Tobin sneaked in some workbook time on his new Sonlight language arts books. (I've finally stopped worrying about keeping to the Instructor's Guide schedule! If Tobin wants to work ahead in phonics and vocabulary, why should I stop him?!) Arden spent time reading on his own, and all the kids did really well with their one-on-one time with Kenna. Hooray!

The other schoolish activity that kept the kids busy was Tobin's "Dig a Glow Dinosaur" project. We had bought the kit for him a couple of years ago for his birthday, but we never seemed to have an opportunity to get it out and do it. It's a very messy project--a block of plaster with dinosaur "bones" hidden inside. There are tools to chip away and brush off the plaster, mimicking archaeology, and then you assemble the skeleton and voila! You have a glow-in-the-dark artifact, LOL. The deck is covered with red plaster, and my kitchen floor has been too, though we've mopped a couple of times since! But it has kept all 5 kids intrigued; Tobin has generously allowed his siblings to bang away and excavate bones along with him. (The fact that the project wasn't finished in 20 minutes probably has something to do with him "letting" the kids "help!")

The Sonlight books have at least been separated into piles: Science, history, Bible, electives, and Charis's new readers, which is a VERY large pile! I've teased her that it looks like she gets to read the best books! The rest of the family may steal her readers and read them together, LOL! We will definitely read Meet Thomas Jefferson before our trip, since our first stop is Monticello!

The plan is for me to assemble the IG notebooks and start our regular school schedule next week. We may very well take two weeks to cover one scheduled week, but we'll see how things go. The kids are beyond excited to begin the next core! Tobin came home the other day, puzzled because he had told his (public school) friend that he loved school, and Daniel had basically told him he was weird, because no one else he knew even liked school! That made me feel extra joyful. :-)

Time to go pack lunches so we can enjoy a picnic after our field trip...that is, if it doesn't start raining!

ETA: I should probably mention--though most of our blog readers probably know this from Facebook--that Charis did not make it to Nationals for the Bible Bee. But she did rank #144 out of 912 primary contestants! (Only the top 100 can go to Nationals.) Hopefully this will be encouraging and motivating for her in future years!