Weekly Wrap-up ~ Field Trips Aren't Just for Kids

It was another abnormal and fun week in our homeschool. For the biggest homebody family in the world, we have been anywhere but home the past few weeks.

Bothwell Lodge

We had a school day on Sunday when we tagged along with Dawson on a field trip. For Dawson's college History Before 1877 class he had to tour a historic site. He chose a place we have wanted to visit for several years: Bothwell Lodge in Sedalia, Missouri.

Bothwell Lodge is a mansion that was built by John Homer Bothwell between the years of 1897 and 1928. Mr. Bothwell, in Dawson's opinion, was the Gatsby of Missouri in the late 1800's. And I think he was right. He was an eccentric guy who created a retreat for himself, some family members, and about 30 of his closest friends. It was always a party at Bothwell Lodge. The furniture in the lodge all belonged to Mr. Bothwell, and his personal library contains an exquisite collection of first edition books. I cannot even imagine the valuation of his library.

The little kids and I approached the lodge from the perspective of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, since we are currently reading that book. We imagined that this was the country home that the children were sent to in the evacuation of World War II. It would have been very similar.

Midweek Schooling

Because of our long day on Sunday and the crazy previous couple of weeks, we took Monday as a Life Skills day. I did laundry and cleaned house, and the kids and I organized their bedroom. Tuesday and Wednesday we spent a lot of time reading and then reviewing some complicated math concepts. We want to be sure that we completely understand the concept of subtracting mixed and improper fractions. This has been difficult, but after this week I am confident we are ready to continue to the next concept.

I want to pause here to express, which I have done before, how grateful I am for the opportunity to homeschool my children. I cringe at the thought of my kids sitting in a classroom where they have had one day to master a difficult math concept and then being forced to move on whether or not they have it mastered. We took three weeks on this one fraction concept because I wanted to make sure the kids really had it before we moved onto another concept. In public school, they would not have that luxury.

Wednesday afternoon Eli had speech therapy. I am seeing a breakthrough with him where he is actually starting to recognize that he might stutter and using his techniques to help him through those instances. I am so proud of his progress!

The Victory Garden

We also hosted our weekly enrichment class on Wednesday. This week we read a couple of chapters out of The Victory Garden and then discussed propaganda posters created to entice American citizens to do their part in the war effort, such as collecting scrap metal and bacon grease, purchasing war bonds, and making personal gardens. Then I grouped the kids into girls and boys and had them work to create their own propaganda poster. The boys went right to work and completed their poster. I was very impressed with how they worked together to come up with their concept and then got right to work on it. They finished it very quickly and did a great job!

The girls took quite a bit more time coming up with their ideas and each started on their portion of the poster. They didn't get it completed so are going to come an extra hour early next week to get it done. I was really happy with the kids' interest level this week.

Warm Springs Ranch - Clydesdales

Yesterday we took another field trip. (This will be our last field trip for a while. Whew!) Kyndal has been wanting to tour the breeding facility of the Budweiser Clydesdale horses. And we are getting ready to move onto the third book in the Chronicles of Narnia series: The Horse and His Boy. Our Further Up and Further In study based on the series suggested that we go on a field trip to a horse farm, so this was the perfect opportunity to do it. (Plus it was a nice birthday gift for Kyndal.)

We had a great day! We learned so much about the horses and the process of breeding them and getting them ready for hitching training. We saw Andrew who is in the Budweiser commercials, Duke who is a very large and very sweet retired hitching horse, and a few of the babies, including Moose who was named after Mike Moustakas from the Kansas City Royals.

Go Royals! Take the Crown!

Today and the Weekend

This evening we have family photos (if it doesn't rain ... please don't rain). We haven't had a formal portrait of our family taken since 2008.

So today the kids are working on their Minecraft and Roller Coaster Tycoon classwork, watching some Brain Games and doing some more reading. We will be finishing the day early today for our photos. I've got chicken in the crockpot for BBQ chicken sandwiches when we get home and then we will be settling in for Game 3 of the World Series.

Of course tomorrow is Halloween and we are ready with our costumes. Brynne is being a Pokemon trainer, Eli is going to be James Bond, and I'm even going to dress up a little bit this year.

Next week, God willing, we will be home each and every day. We are going to do a full at-home school week hitting all of our subjects. As much fun as we have had the past few weeks, I am really looking forward to a week actually HOMEschooling.


2015-2016 Hours Logged - 253 1/2 hours out of 1,000 required hours (81 1/2 hours outside home)
Plus 167 Summer Hours

*********************

We are linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Mary at Homegrown Learners.