Our weekly notebook: The week with Halloween

Life this week...

It was the week of Halloween, and the week before we leave for vacation. Let me tell you, it was hard for all of us to focus! With Halloween in the air there was a lot of excitement, and I had a lot on my mind to get ready for our trip next week. Still busy and productive though. I think I am relieved that Halloween is over though. It was an odd year, we had only one trick or treat family (during the time that we were home), so we have a ton of leftover candy.

Homeschool this week...

I feel like we've been doing this bread thing for a long time, but we are almost done! This unit study is broken up into 5 days, and we're doing about 1 day a week, so it has pretty much taken the whole month. We still have day 5 to go, and our finale will be a trip to a local bakery. That will all have to happen when we get back from our trip, so it's on hold for now. But, this week we got Day 4 done.

I put it up on the big TV this time. Usually we just gather around the laptop, but it's fun to do this sometimes.

We did a yeast experiment...

Sugar and warm water bubbled the best! It was an interesting experiment. I love that my boys understand what yeast is now.

Aric made this spider bread while Alex and I did the yeast experiment.

It was a fun day. If you are interested in this unit study we used it is from UnitStudy.com (affiliate link). A lot of great unit studies there, and you don't have to do a lot of prep and planning!

Reviews we are working on...

Alex is still learning the violin through one of our reviews. It's called Practice Monkeys, and it's taught via live and recorded videos. He was able to finally get to his first live class this week. Unfortunately, the time just doesn't work most days for the live time, so he usually does the recorded session. It was fun for him to try out a live class this week. It worked well too. The teacher was able to see him, and he saw that other kids were participating in the class too.

Here he is showing her his bow hold. It was a good experience for him. He got camera shy the first time, and ran away. We had to practice sitting in front of the camera a little bit before class. Review for this will be in Jan. 2019. We get a little longer for this review so they can really get a chance to get into the program. I'm so glad about that! We've had some hiccups getting going with this, but I'm excited now that we've finally got it figured out.

Helpful homeschool tips and advice to share...

These carts! They are amazing. I just love the one we have, and I want to get more. I've chosen to put all our school supplies in it, so we can just wheel it into the living room when we are sitting on the couch. No more sending kids to get supplies, and losing their focus! It's also nice to have everything in one place. I've also seen these carts used for important books for the day. Ours was from Ikea, but I've seen them at various other stores now too.

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

On Tuesday we had a pretty busy day. First it was the harvest festival at our Charter school. It was a lot of fun for all my kids. April helped, and the boys enjoyed games and lots of sweet treats. One of the games was a cake walk, and the big prize was a cake made by a Mom who owns a bakery. These cakes were beautiful, and there were only 5. Alex played a few rounds, and he won the very last cake! He was thrilled, and so proud that he won. Although I'm sure he would have been just as happy if he didn't. It was a special treat. By the way the cake was delicious.

After the harvest festival we went to the homeschool Halloween skate. It was a cake party as well. So, we ate way to much cake and skated around in circles. Lots of fun. This guy can zoom.

It was dentist day for all the kids on Thursday. I'm so glad this has gotten easier over time. We breezed right through, and this kid had no cavities! Neither did the other kids. Phew!

That about wraps up our week! It was a busy whirlwind of Halloween and life. How was your week? I am linking this up to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-up.