The Weekly Wrap-Up: Summertime Is Here

What a week! It's been a literal whirlwind!

And it's been a few weeks since I posted a *weekly wrap-up*. Isn't that how it is when summertime hits? If I thought things were going to slow down a bit, I was sorely mistaken.

We have *officially* completed our school year. However, while we are taking a bit of a break this first part of the month, we are continuing our history and science throughout the summer. With math exercises and lots of reading thrown in for good measure.

This week was The Princess' Girl Scout summer day camp and, boy, was she ever excited! Something about packing a lunch, hiking and making crafts...:)

And since Mr. B was a bit bummed about his big sis being gone on Monday, we met a friend and her son and went to see a *magic* show at the library. The boys had so much fun!

Vince was out of town last weekend, but he hit some yard sales while he was gone and found The Princess a clone trooper helmet for $2! He was so excited because this meant he could get out his Darth Vader helmet and Mr. B could get his Boba Fet helmet out and they could do battle! See how things are at our house? Yes, we're Star Wars nerds:)

Then came Mr. B's 6th birthday smack in the middle of this busy week. And we spent the whole day celebrating! He was pretty excited about his cake and his cupcakes. Not that you can't tell that from the expression on his face...

Yep, pretty excited! He kept saying "this is the best birthday ever!" Of course, he says that every year~it's so cute!

After a birthday lunch we took the kiddos to the local park's pool to cool off (we are having ridiculous high temps here already!). My kiddos are part fish and they had SO much fun swimming the day away.

Friday we took a bit of a road trip to Hot Springs, AR, and met up with The Princess' Girl Scout troop for a day at the Mid-America Science Museum. It was really great! Somehow I wasn't even aware of this museum until last year and I was very excited to take the kids. It didn't disappoint! We all loved it! I'll be posting more on our visit here next week.

Before we headed home we made one more stop at the Hot Springs National Park and toured one of the bathhouses. It was so interesting! We were all pretty worn out by the time we wrapped things up, but it was worth the stop. A post will be forthcoming on that asap.

And now I'm looking forward to sleeping in and having a day at home~catching up on the housework, etc. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my little early bird (Mr. B!) will sleep in (please, please, please!).

This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...

my blessed life

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