Friday, September 9, 2011

Weekly Report: Summer is Almost Over!

I haven't done a weekly report recently.  Mostly because I don't think about it.  Fridays are busy for us. Cleaning and cooking in preparation for the Sabbath.  Plus we usually have some errands to run.

This week though, I really want to share some pictures and thought I'd turn the post into a weekly report.

In our home life, Nyal got a job!! Woohoo! He graduated in June with an Associates in Drafting and has been looking for work all summer.  He started on Tuesday.  It's about an hour and half from where we are living, so we are splitting our time between him commuting the whole way and staying with my mom who lives closer to his work.  We are looking for a place closer (but still close to our church family).  We put an application in for a duplex and are hoping to hear back early next week.

On the homeschool side of things, we have been pretty laid back this summer all the time.  We have a goal of getting through Story of the World - Volume 1 before we leave for Feast (only four and half weeks!).  If we don't quite get through, I'm not worried.  Bug has listened to the whole thing through on CD and we can check it out again to give him some review after the Feast.  We'll also finish up what we can in earth science before the Feast.  I was hoping to do astronomy this summer too, but I think we'd prefer to spend more time on it and we'll do it right after the Feast.

We dove into ancient Rome this week.  Bug's loving it, as he has all of ancient history.  If asked, he'll tell you history is his favorite subject.  We'll spend more time next week exploring Roman life.  We checked out many many books from the library today.

We took a brief look at volcanoes today and Bug drew a diagram of a cone volcano.  He did a pretty good job, injecting his boy personality into it.

It's hard to see, but there dead people at the base of the volcano!
Earlier in the week we celebrated 'Not Back to School Day', the day public schools open for the year.  We enjoyed our homeschool freedom by having a cup of frozen yogurt! 

He's enjoying himself, I promise! The sun was in his eyes though! 
Today we had more summer fun by building a solar oven out of a pizza box!  We made it into an experiment to see how hot it was inside the solar oven versus the inside of a plain pizza box.


The solar oven definitely got hotter!  The outside thermometer read almost 110* (after sitting in the sun - it was really only about 93*).  The inside of the solar oven got to 130* (in about 15 minutes) and the regular pizza box was only at 100*!   After watching our chocolate melt on our graham crackers, we enjoyed a couple s'mores.  The ones from the solar oven were definitely more melted and tasted much better! 

So that was our week.  I'm hoping next week is a little more calm.  With Nyal taking our only car to work, it makes us stick around home a bit more! :) 

4 comments:

  1. Oh, I have plans to try the solar pizza oven out next week or the week after! We'll be studying the sun and thought it would be fun! Glad to read about someone who's tried it!

    Stopping by from Kris's Weekly Wrap-up!

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  2. Congratulations on Nyal getting a job!

    It looks like you had a great week. Yogurt on the first day of non-school is always an excellent idea.

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  3. I love the science experiment, solar pizza boxes. Makes me wonder what the inside of the solar box would be in my neck of the woods.

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  4. Sounds like a fantastic week! We also only have one car & sometimes I love that it keeps us home more. Sometimes not but it is usually a blessing.

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