Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 5

A quick wrap-up for last week. We had another great week, with a lot of fun and a bit of studying. We continued our Prehistory study and watched the BBC Walking with Dinosaurs documentary. We enjoyed the Walking with Monsters more than this one, but it was still interesting.

We spent more time at the park, the beach, with family and friends. We also did something completely new to us: we were extras in a music video! It was for a local singer and we were "acting" at a restaurant. This was such a great experience for my kids and I! Andre dreams of becoming a movie director one day and so this was very exciting for him!

Adrienne left very early on Sunday morning for her two-week Air Cadets camp. I am so happy for her, she applied for this camp and was thrilled when she found out she could go. We all miss her already, but we do know she will love this experience.

I am taking a break from blogging for the next three weeks. I am planning on starting our new school year on August 15. Over the next three weeks, I will be busy finishing up this past year's report cards and organizing our upcoming school year. If anything of interest pops up, I will write about it, but for the most part I will be off, including the wrap-up posts.

Hope you are all having a wonderful summer, enjoy your time and your family!

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 3 & 4

Two weeks have gone by so fast! Summer is here and we love it. Here is a quick review of our last two weeks.

The first week we visited my aunt's pool, twice! The kids and I had a lot of fun there and we are so grateful to be able to go there. The weather is really hot and can be humid here too, so an afternoon spent in a swimming pool is perfect.

We continued with our Prehistory study. We learned about the first swamps and forests, the first reptiles and watched the BBC Walking with Monsters documentary. That documentary is part of a series of three and is amazing to watch. I would recommend it, we found this particular title at our local library. I also found it on youtube (the picture quality isn't as great as on DVD):







Adrienne finished her Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra lessons during that first week. She wanted to be finished before her birthday, so she decided to double up her lessons!

Celeste completed one lesson in the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and practiced reading in her Elson Reader, two pages.

On Saturday, Adrienne and I attended a free outdoor concert given by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. It was a quintet made up of an oboe, a clarinet, a flute, a bassoon, and a horn. I took a short video of it:

The second week, we basically took the whole week off. On Tuesday, it was Adrienne's birthday. She turned 14!

We could call that week the movie week. We went to the show twice! First was on Adrienne's birthday. She chose to go see Mr. Popper's Penguins. We had listened to the audio book a while ago and were all curious to see this movie version with Jim Carrey. We thought it was quite different from the book, but we loved it anyway. Jim Carrey is very funny! The trailers never show his office assistant, Pippi, but she is a great part of the movie too! 






Adrienne and I went out again to the movies to the midnight showing of the new and last Harry Potter movie.

We met our cousins at the local festival on Saturday and watched parts of the parade and a fun magic show. It was so hot!! We biked there and it was so hot!

The rest of the week we spent at home mostly, trying to keep cool. Another nice relaxing week!

If you would like to read more weekly wrap-up posts by other homeschoolers, please visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 2

What a week! We had a great time this past week and spent a lot of time outside. We love summer, being able to stay outside all day and late into the evening, eating fresh fruits and veggies from the farm stands, visiting parks and beaches, going for bike rides and more! We didn't do as much "school stuff" because we were having so much fun outside, which is just fine since we are on our summer break anyway!

Here is the breakdown for the week:

- Adrienne completed 11 lessons in her Teaching Textbooks Math Pre-Algebra! She started doubling up her lessons on Tuesday and is completing another 2 today.
- Andre did 1 lesson in Math
- Celeste did one lesson in Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, and read two pages in her Elson Reader. She also read a few picture books herself!
- Together, we completed one day of study in Prehistory, which included two lessons about the creatures of the sea from 510 to 408 millions years ago and the first fish.

We started a new read aloud, Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. We all decided to work our way through these lists. I might add a tab at the top of the blog to keep track of what we all read.


This past week, we visited a favourite park in Kingsville and had a family picnic there. We brought Orion along and he loved digging in the sand at the beach and swimming in the lake. It was a beautiful day! 

I had planned a fun day at our local splashpad for our homeschool group. We didn't have a great turnout because the "fishflies" are here, but we still had a great time.

We had a few days when my husband was home this week, so we took advantage of it. We decided to explore a bit and visited a new-to-us provincial park. This one was on Lake Erie and about an hour drive from us. The area was beautiful and we had brought a picnic along. Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay because of the biting flies there. We think they may be black flies, but we are not sure. They swarmed us as soon as we stood still, so we kept moving around. We even ate our lunch while walking. We were able to still have some fun and found a lot of "lake" glass, but we didn't stay as long as we had planned. We will try again in a couple of weeks!

We had an awesome and fun week! How was yours?

If you would like to read more wrap-up posts, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers blog.

A day at the lake

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On Sunday, we drove for about an hour and visited a tiny little town called Mitchell's Bay on Lake St.Clair. We spent most our time there watching the kite surfers. I think they can be called kiteboarders too. We had never seen these before, and it was a very windy day. It looked perfect for them. There was a big group of them, at different skill levels.

The kids also enjoyed playing at the playground, especially on this:

Splah Pad Fun!

This past Saturday, we decided to go to Windsor and visit one of the splash pads there. We were the only ones there most of the time! It was a beautiful day and not as humid. I am not sure why it wasn't busier, but we didn't complain! I love watching my kids play. Andre always makes me laugh, in the next two photos he is being the "boss" of the water, or is it Poseidon?

My teenager still has fun at the splash pad too!

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And yes..we had to have snacks too!

A fun summer day!

more simple summer fun

Day at the Detroit Zoo

We had a nice time at the zoo with our cousins. Even though it was very busy, hot, and we didn't see everything, we still enjoyed our day. We will try to go in the fall again, when it might be quieter and cooler! Here are a few pictures from our day.

First up: sloth, tree kangaroo, anteater, fallow deer, prairie dogs, and red kangaroo.

In the Arctic Ring of Life, we saw an arctic fox (with its summer coat), polar bears, and playful seals. On the way out from the seals exhibit, they had a wall covered with ice. Princess thought it was the best!






Last, we saw the penguins:

Kids Love a Good Storm!

We have had quite a few storms since we moved here, and it's the same thing every time! The kids get all excited! I am glad, better than being scared of a storm...

Tonight we even had some hail...so out the bowls went (not the kids, I draw the line somewhere) and when it slowed down after a few minutes, the bowls were full and the kids were amazed. We still had more lightning and thunder for a little longer and then back to sunshine.

One of Fairy's favourite topic to learn about for the last few years has been weather but in particular storms, tornadoes, hurricanes...the natural catastrophes get her interest. She was the most excited tonight!

A Fun Weekend in the Sun

On Sunday, we spent the day with family for a pool party. It was very nice hanging out with all the cousins, aunts and uncles. It was perfect weather and the kids had a blast in the pool, hot tub, and with the giant chess game.

On Monday, Daddy actually had the day off! We went to check out a new (to us) provincial park and its beaches. We had a wonderful family day, relaxing and playing in the lake and the sand. Fairy loves building sand castles.