Weekly Wrap-up May 26

We've come to the end of another week at Seeking Squirrels! The girls have taken moving to more school time well. We're still taking it somewhat easy, nothing like a full schedule, but we're definitely doing more. I'm getting us up to a comfortable level that I would like us to maintain through the summer for the most part.

We always start with Monkey doing some math while I work on a few things with Bear. I follow her lead on this since she is still 4 and I consider school to be optional at this point. Usually, though, she is eager to work on a few things. We often do her phonics lesson at this time and some math. Sometimes we do handwriting but that's the one she's most likely to say no to! We've recently added pages from Developing the Early Learner and she's always loved doing pages from Critical Thinking Co books. Mind Benders and Can You Find Me are her favorites.

After 20-30 minutes, Bear is ready for a break so she finds something to play and Monkey and I do spelling or we all move on to science together. This week we returned to our bubbleology unit since weather was cooperating again. They had fun experimenting with vinegar and baking soda!

My little scientist was not content with just following the procedure in our unit study. She wanted to keep trying different amounts of vinegar or baking soda to find out what worked best. I was impressed with the decisions she made. She even tried not to change both things at once. She would change only the amount of one or the other in order to note the differences. She found that it wasn't always better to just add more baking soda as she thought it would be. But she had fun pouring vinegar on all the bits of baking soda left on the ground after that one! 

This week we started a unit on Evolution that we do after science or spelling. I read to them while they color in pictures for the timeline. After that we head upstairs for read-alouds. They like to swing while I read! Monkey had a bit of a rough week sensory-wise so she spent some of the time swinging in her sensory sock. Right now we are reading A Wrinkle in Time and they are both really enjoying it. 

We had a box day this week! That means we had a box arrive with new school materials! We love box days! I wish I had gotten a picture once everything was out and spread around them but I didn't think to get that this time. 

This is the Usborne book How Things Work. I got it for a unit on Physics we'll be doing sometime this fall or winter, but Monkey read half of it right out of the box!

We took the girls to the aquarium again. They do love it there and the sensory input of touching the animals is good for Monkey. Bear likes it, too, but she's a bit more hesitant with touching them and doesn't go in to the bird cage. 

All told we had a good week! Monkey has done a great job with her independent folder. I give her the folder on Monday with a handful of worksheets she can do without my help. She is expected to finish it by Friday. I do still remind her and make sure to give her time to work on it, but she knows it's up to her to finish. She has taken the responsibility seriously! Last week she finished her folder by lunch on Friday. This week she didn't quite complete it, but we kind of lost today because daddy had a medical procedure that I needed to take him to and Monkey and Bear stayed with grandma. Monkey did a couple pages in her folder while there which is more than I expected! There isn't much left so we will finish it over the weekend. We might also do the evolution lesson we missed today so we can stay on track with it. Hey, we homeschool, no need to box school into M-F business hours!