Weekly Recap: Last Week of Summer!

EEEK is it really the end of July??? Where did the summer go? It has been so hot during July, I feel like we have not spent enough time enjoying the outdoors. But we are scheduled to start our 2011-2012 school year on Monday, so as they say "The show must go on!"

This week we have attempted to finish our Ancient Greece unit. We spent a few days this summer catching up on the history we did not finish during the "school year". I must say I thought it would be smoother and we did get a lot accomplished, but I think I am realizing that at some point we must say, "It is finished, it is a job well-done even if it is not perfect and we did not cover EVERYTHING." And that is OK. Right? I mean we are going to cover this again 2 more times. So I am letting it go.... sort of... no really I am. ;)

We finished up our standardized testing this week and I learned it was not as daunting as I feared. Rose finished with hardly any complaints and quickly! Daisy did too for the most part, but she needs more breaks, so hers took a little longer. All seems to have gone well but I will not put them off this long next year. Especially since I now know what to expect. Math surely would have gone more smoothly if we did not take 7 weeks off before doing it. OH well, live and learn! Especially since I keep having to remind myself that it really doesn't count for anything.

Uncle Noah was in town to play baseball against the Dragons, so we visited with him and spent the afternoon at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery where the girls tested their puzzle skills at Mindbender Mansion. This traveling exhibit was both hands and bodies-on and very cool. In each "room" of the exhibit, there were puzzles to solve and when you solved them you earned a password to enter into the Mindbender Mansion vault. If the exhibit comes to your town, I highly recommend a visit. The favorite puzzle was a huge light up floor with trivia questions. you had to spell the answer by jumping on the right letters (like scrabble). I wish we had a disco floor at home to do spelling on! We also visited the planetarium for a presentation on the sky that night and the NOAA sphere for a lesson on global weather. It was our first visit to the Boonshoft and it was so much fun and we will be back!

We made it onto the Mindbender Mansion Wall of Fame!





The rest of the week we spent trying to maneuver the world of student-athletes and injuries with Daisy. She injured her back over a month ago and we are trying to get a more definite diagnosis. It is tricky when everyone giving advice seems to have their own agenda, but eventually it will all work out.