The Rundown – Week in Review – Week 11

Friends, it’s been fantastic fall week here.   The colors of fall are exploding all around us and we can’t get enough!  Sure, the temperature still feels like early summer on some days, but the gorgeous backdrop makes up for it.

The Rundown - Week in Review - Week 11

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Homeschool

I’ve been saying for years now that I wanted Prissy’s preschool time to be more play and less school than The Boy did at her age.  (We were new homeschoolers at that point and mistakenly thought homeschool was supposed to be school at home.)  The thing is that she’s ready to learn more than I initially intended to teach her at this age. That said, she’s not quite four yet and still needs time to be a four year-old.

This week, we found the balance.  We had lots of fun covering Letter K with God’s Little Explorers and Preschool Learning Letter by Letter.  We even enjoyed going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons each day. Other than that, her days were full of books, drawing, playing with her babies, and hosting tea parties.  Her week was pretty much everything a little one needs and it was something to smile about.

Prissy and The Boy both got in on some fun art action this week.  We put all of our leaf hunts to good use and made leaf rubbings with some of our finds, but we also used them for the leaf bowl projects from The Art of Fall.  We opted to use Sculpey for our leaves; that allowed us to simply bake our leaf creations and paint them fairly quickly.  This was a super fun project and both of the leaves turned out great!

The Rundown - Week in Review - Week 11 Homeschool

The Boy also got to enjoy some art time Michelangelo-style through our co-op group.   Although Michelangelo actually stood while painting the Sistine Chapel, we let the kids work under the tables since it was a lot safer than working with scaffolding and ceiling!

At home, the highlight of his week was history.  Our Mystery of History lessons for the week were full of good stuff, but the story of Beowulf and the prospect of real “fire-breathing” dragons had him captivated.  We especially loved being introduced to the bombardier beetle and it’s predator defense through this lesson.

As MOH author Linda Hobar points out, if we know that the bombardier beetle exists and have seen its defense in action, then it’s entirely possible there were dragon-like creatures (as in some type of dinosaur) that had similar defenses.  The possiblities alone had him sketching dragons all week long!

Favorite Moments

Lots of my favorite moments from this week were the seemingly small things.  That’s the funny thing about the small things though.  You look back and see that they were big and beautiful.  Even in their simplicity.

The Rundown - Week in Review - Week 11
We found the fuzzy little guy in the bottom corner this week and thought we’d take him inside and observe him. It’s been a while since we’ve had a caterpillar to watch. (In case you wondered, Prissy named him Steve.)

Seeing the Beauty

Between the gorgeous fall leaves and blazing skies, we’ve seen glimpses of God’s glory over and over again this week.  In all of it, my heart swells when I see my kids look at the world around them and smile.  They notice.  They applaud.  They breathe it in.

There are plenty of reasons to embrace homeschooling, but for me, one of the greatest gifts is that we don’t have to run the race everyone else has chosen.  The path we’ve chosen – or the path that’s chosen us – is the scenic route.  We’ll gladly take the slower route and enjoy the view.  After all, it’s hard to find God when you don’t slow down enough to see Him.

Week in Review - Week 11 - The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. - Ann Voskamp

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That’s it for us this week.  Love your people and make some memories!

Happy to be linking up with Homegrown Learners Collage Friday and Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-Up.

Collage Friday with Homegrown Learners

Weekly Wrap-Up