Good Week

Wow, did we have a GREAT week! First of all, the weather was so wonderful and it was in the low 80's just about everyday. No humidity and it was actually really pleasent to be outside - you didn't start to sweat after only five minutes. LOL It has warmed up quite a bit in the last couple days so that's kinda a bummer. Yes, we are getting extremely tired of the hot summer weather and we are ready for FALL! And we are ready for another camping trip too! Hopefully sometime next month we will be able to plan something (if's it cooler!) because all three of us are itching to go. My Mom and Dad might go with us - I actually talked my Mom into it! Her? Sleeping in a tent?! Yes, I think it might actually happen. :) (Love ya Mom!) Hunting season will be starting very soon so now I guess we'll have to see if we can drag my Dad away from the lease for a weekend. They have been going up a lot getting things prepared. Right now he is in Houston though helping restore the power from Hurricane Ike (he works for the electric company). He's been there for a week and should be home next Sunday.

So back to our fabulous week.... On Tuesday it was just way to beautiful to be inside for even a minute. Brenna spent most of the time in the backyard in her playhouse at my Grandma's while we were there. When we left there we went home, gathered her spelling curriculum, some snacks and drinks and headed to the park. We ended up staying at the park for three hours! We sat at the picnic table and did her spelling (which she did wonderful at!). I thought I'd make it a little fun and brought a candy bar with us, which she was able to take a bite of with every word she got correct. Well, with as good as she is spelling, the entire thing was gone after doing twenty words. My sister-in-law, Jenny and my cute little niece, Keira, met us there so it was nice because I actually got a picture with me in it.

It was nice doing her school work at the park. What an advantage of homeschooling! I think we might do that a lot more once it starts to stay cool on a regular basis. Maybe next time we will even bring her math and a few books to read.

Speaking of math.... we have not really been doing it on a daily basis. I guess about three times a week has been the norm for us. I'm really not too worried about it because the stuff that we are doing right now is so easy for her and like I have said before, we are definitely not structured at all. We have actually skipped a lot of the worksheets and on a lot of the lessons I have just gone straight to the review/test page. She does it by herself, gets them all right and we are on to the next thing. No need spending a lot of time on "What's 7+0?" when she is already doing easy multiplication and adding bigger numbers. Now don't get me wrong, the entire curriculum is not going to be like this. After we get through a lot of the 'easy stuff' it will become a little more challenging for her. There are things like time and money that she has not mastered yet as wellas double digit addition, which we will be getting to very soon. In fact, I might just skip the next couple lessons completely because she is getting very bored with it already and she is just NOT having fun at all.

Here's a picture that I took a few weeks ago of her learning place value. She did have a blast with that and really seemed to enjoy it! It uses a big poster and it is called "Decimal Street". We played a few games and she picked it up very quickly.

So on Wednesday Brenna and I had a field trip with the homeschool group to the Arts and Heritage museum. It was pretty interesting and Brenna seemed to have a good time. I think her favorite part was getting to see her friends though. LOL At the museum they had the first house built in our city, along with the first post office, hospital and dentist. There were so many things from the 'oldin' days' (as Brenna calls it) and she got a kick out of seeing everything. Even though Brenna was very interested in certain things, I think it is a place that she would appreciate MORE if she were a little older.

Here's a couple pictures from the field trip....