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The Weekly Wrap-Up: *Initiative*, Light Boxes & Jupiter

Ahh...the weekly wrap-up. I love these because it makes me take the time to reflect on our week and remember all of those good moments. You know, the ones that sometimes get crowded out of our thoughts because we often focus on all of the fails and frustrations.

And I had plenty of fails and frustrations this week, as usual. I am only human. And so are my children. Often they act just like me, unfortunately. This motivates me to seek to follow Christ even more earnestly.

It was a good week though, another full one!

We began learning about *initiative* in our Character Sketch studies. We really do enjoy learning how even the animals that God created show such remarkable character traits.

We are also learning Psalm 136:1-9 this month; a psalm of thanksgiving.

In math we are still waiting on our last backordered Singapore book to come in (I was notified that it shipped today--yea!), so we have been exploring some Math Mammoth in the meantime.
In language arts, The Princess is almost finished with her unit with Charlotte's Web and Mr. B is nearly finished with his first reader.

I mentioned last week that we have begun our study on Botany with Apologia's Exploring Creation series. That's going well! We got our light box finished and our seeds planted this week! We are dutifully watering them daily as instructed.

I am looking forward to having some fresh herbs here at home through the winter--I can almost taste the pico de gallo!

We also enjoyed the beautiful view of Jupiter in the nighttime sky mid-week--did you get to see it? I am so glad that we did that astronomy study last year, it's amazing what the kids have retained from that.

(Jupiter is that small white dot to our right of the moon)

We continued our study of ancient history with India this week. I had planned to prepare an Indian-style dinner one night (with recipes from my sweet friend in South Africa), but it just didn't work out that way. We'll plan to have Indian food one night next week though.

I introduced our newest composer and artist for our appreciation studies: Haydn and Mary Cassett. Thus far we have simply listened to some of Haydn's music and looked at a few of Mary's paintings. We're looking forward to a library trip next week to get more resources.

We did begin two new subjects this week. Well, one is actually an extension of our art appreciation studies. We have begun using Artistic Pursuits to learn more about how to create art.

We have also begun learning some French using Great Commission Languages. The Princess is very excited about this since she has been asking to learn French recently.

Today we concluded our week with our homeschool group. We had a short Veteran's Day ceremony and then the kiddos enjoyed some game and craft time while the parents met and made plans for upcoming events.

We're looking forward to a great weekend with friends from out-of-town and an early Thanksgiving meal with our church family this Sunday!

Enjoy your weekend!

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