Homeschool Open House Week in Review: Week 12

Homeschool Open House Week in Review
Week 12: November 18-24, 2007

Older son is aged 10 and in 5th grade.
Younger son is aged 7 and in 2nd grade.

This is the week of Thanksgiving. This is also the week that we felt more back on track as a family and where our family is pretty stable regarding adjusting to the loss of my father-in-law.

The FIRST LEGO League tournament is in less than two weeks. This means that we cannot simply downshift our usual homeschool plans to get ready for the holiday. Additional time was added to finish preparations for the FIRST LEGO League.

My kids are both in the church’s children’s choir and the week began with my children trying out for solo singing parts for Christmas songs they will be singing in December. So Sunday was spent at church choir, with my kids in their religious education classes, and at the FIRST LEGO League class. Housecleaning was done to prepare for Thanksgiving. And my husband was doing cooking for Thanksgiving too.

Monday my older son had what we think is his last reading test (a project we are helping a college student seeking a degree to be a reading specialist teacher with). After a bit of homeschooling we spent the afternoon with five homeschooling families at one person’s home. The kids played Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, board games, with toys indoors and had some outdoor play. The night ended with a Cub Scout meeting.

Tuesday was spent mostly not home. We did just some of our homeschooling in the morning. The kids and I did a zillion errands for Thanksgiving such as visiting the turkey farm to pick up the fresh turkey. I had to help my brother and sister-in-law by babysitting for my nephew while they had an appointment regarding my other nephew’s autism.

Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving was dedicated to decluttering and cleaning the house. We only did a small amount of our usual homeschooling work.

Thanksgiving Day we hosted dinner here for my family. The meal was delicious although my picky eater children barely ate any of the meal. Later we went to visit my brother-in-law’s family where my mother-in-law had eaten. We then hung out at my mother-in-law’s to help her in the evening since her caregiver was not available. We got home quite late and went to bed too late.

Friday morning we slept in. I went out by myself to do a bit of Black Friday shopping (at 11:30 a.m.) and the traffic was so bad I aborted the mission half way through. The afternoon my husband and kids spent at an additional LEGO class.

Saturday the kids went with my husband to do shopping errands and to visit and help out my mother-in-law. I stayed home to relax and have a ‘me day’. I really felt that lately we’ve been running around too much and doing stuff to prepare for other people or to prepare the house to look nice. I needed a day where I had no demands on my time. I was going to have fun making some art but instead I ended up writing and blogging and catching up on emails.

So that was the week. It went by in a flash.

My Children's Self-Initiated Stuff

Here are some of the things my children do in their spare time regarding play and reading which is self-initiated.

Older Son, alone:

Re-reading various Shonen Jump magazine (manga) (he subscribes to it)
Reading Beckett Yu-Gi-Oh! to learn about the cards and their monetary values.
Organizing his Yu-Gi-Oh! collection
Reading Transformers, the Young Adult book format/full-color manga (we just discoved this at the public library)

Younger Son, alone:

Reading Yu-Gi-Oh! manga
Reading Beckett Yu-Gi-Oh! to learn about the cards and their monetary values.
Reading Transformers, the Young Adult book format/full-color manga (we just discoved this at the public library)

Both children alone or together:

Played Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game with each other
Fooz ball (tabletop soccer game), with each other, with friends or with my husband (a lot)
Playing with LEGOs (making spaceships, working on the command center, a project that is taking over a year)
On their own, started playing a lot with our talking globe (they have been disinterested in the past)
Played some LEGO Star Wars video game on the PC
Playing Timez Attack
Playing card games with regular playing cards

Until next week....

General Information:
Homeschool Open House’s Weekly Reporter blog post project is a concept devised by Jessica of Trivium Academy. For more information, see the Trivium Academy blog entry dated 9/04/07.

Graphics which I am using in my Homeschool Open House and Weekly Reporter were designed by Jessica and are available on her blog, again in the same blog post dated 9/04/07.

For information about how you can become a Weekly Reporter or to view a list of other Weekly Reporters, read the information at Trivium Academy in the 9/04/07 blog post or see the information in her right sidebar.

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