Our homeschool notebook: My weekly homeschool journal

Sunday, July 1, 2018

My weekly homeschool journal

Life this week...

Just another typical summer week around here. Dad was in Japan for most of it, so I guess that isn't so typical. But, the rest is. It was a week filled with swimming, cookies, bowling, and visiting friends.

Homeschool this week...

We are still working through our Apologia Elementary Chemistry and Physics book this summer, and one of the projects at the end of a chapter is to make a sugar cookie periodic table of the elements. I couldn't resist doing this project because it involves cookies, and looked so awesome. I knew it was a big project going into it, so I'm glad we ended up doing it this summer. We worked on this over the course of 3 days in between other things. We mixed the first day, baked the second day, and decorated/assembled the 3rd day.

Mixing up the dough one evening before bed.

That's a lot of cookie dough! The recipe in this book turned out to be perfect for the cookie dough. It made all 115+ cookies, and it tasted good.

Dough ready for refrigeration overnight.

We were finally ready to cut all the square cookies out the next afternoon. I couldn't find a smaller square cookie cutter, so our whole chart ended up pretty big. We were able to crank the dough out, and bake it all pretty fast. We got a system down that worked well! First Alex helped me cut for a while, then Aric. It was fun to work with each of them one-on-one. I got to talk about things, and help them learn how to cut good cookies out. This whole project overall was an awesome learning experience.

We stacked the squares in stacks of six to make it easy for counting, but not too tall that they would fall over. Some cookies were thin, some were thick. They all had their own individuality! But, they all tasted delicious.

While we were decorating there was a guessing/finding game going on. They would ask each other where a certain element was, or they would look up one they wanted to learn more about.

Finally, the completed chart. I ran out of frosting for the very last cookie. It worked because it was yellow. You almost don't notice. Just FYI, there is a lot of butter there! LOL.

Periodic Table of elements.

We reconfigured our tables so that they ran long because our chart ended up that big.

What do you do with 115 cookies? Give them away! I loved getting to share so many cookies! It was, the frosting on the cookie of the whole project. It seemed everyone enjoyed partaking of them. I still have just a few cookies left as of today! I think we may have to toss the rest soon. It's making for interesting colors in the bathroom if you know what I mean.

I tried to match elements to the initials of the families I gave cookies to. Some of them worked out so lovely like this homeschool family that we love. I organized the plate much nicer when I gave it to them, but their last name begins with "W", and the other 6 match each family member pretty well.

Helpful homeschool tips and advice to share...

One morning my boys got tools and random pieces of wood and metal out, and started creating. I was annoyed at the mess AND the noise they were making, and wished they could just be normal kids. Then, I just happened watched an episode of Once upon a time later that day. This particular episode Emma was going to get rid of her magic because she wanted to be normal, but in the end everyone realized that her magic is what makes her special. I realized that this is what makes my boys special. Their desire to create and make things with tools, and wood, and metal. Later that night I found Alex's creation. He had put some screws, and wrapped the metal around it to make something that looked kind of cool. I realized that my thought that morning of them just needing to be "normal" was not really what I should want. That's part of why I homeschool. I want them to be their own person. So, I guess my advice is to remember that your children are creative, and inquisitive beings. They need to explore, mess and all. Whatever that mess may be because it may not always look the same for each kid.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

We have been going to the Thursday summer library shows. This guy was pretty funny.

He even got Aric to participate...

We do the summer kids free bowling, and try to go weekly. We made it out again this week. Alex got brave and tried bowling without the ramp this week. He did awesome, and decided he can play pretty well without the ramp now. Aaron feels like he has gone backwards and didn't play as good as he used to. It's all about practicing. I also played this week. I forgot how fun bowling can be!

We have also been meeting up with our church playgroup. It's been a fun tour of parks. This week they went to Keizer Rapids park.

A new WinCo foods opened up about 30 minutes away from us, but it's on a path that we often take, so we stopped in to check it out on our way home one day. I just love WinCo foods, and wish we could have one really close to us, but since we have a distribution center right in town I guess it's their policy that they have to be a certain distance away. Anyway, this new one is so nice! I was impressed, and I really like how it's laid out.

We also met up with our local homeschool friends at a park, but didn't get any pictures there.

My favorite thing this week was...

Going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast with my Hubby for a date. We had to head up to Portland to get his new canoe, and decided to make a date of it.

My kids' favorite thing this week was...

I didn't officially ask them what their favorite thing was, but Aric was pretty thrilled when this Pikachu came home from Japan with Dad. The boys were pretty happy when he came home.

Things I'm working on...

Starting to think about getting organized for next school year. I have a lot to figure out still, and all of our books and shelves need reorganizing.

What we're reading...

We finished listening to Runaway Ralph. The boys liked this, and now they all want a cute little pet mouse.

I have been reading On the Banks of Plum Creek for over a year on and off. I decided it needed to be finished this summer. I finally finished it! Now I'm onto the next one!