Each Thursday afternoon I sit and write this collage post.
My kids have piano lessons, so I take advantage of the 75 uniterrupted minutes of time to document and reflect on the week.
Today the weather is beautiful - the leaves are almost all off the trees and it's peaceful and cool.
There's SO MUCH to be thankful for, and I'm happy we all get to share our weeks with each other during Collage Friday.
Just a little heads up... in 2 Fridays I will be visiting with family and friends in South Florida. We are spending an entire week hopefully relaxing and enjoying ourselves. There will be NO Collage Friday on November 29th from me.
{I'll remind you again next week, too.}
Frog Dissections
This week was a monumental Classical Conversations day for Anna!
Each week her Challenge A class researches a specific science topic. This week it was amphibians.
The class dissected frogs. Anna was so excited about this dissection that she had another adult come to the Foundations room where I was helping and ask me to come witness the dissection!
This child has always loved stuff like this. Most of the kids were a little squeamish, but Anna was right in her element!
This is the 12th week of Challenge A. I am BLOWN AWAY by the amount of material Anna has learned, and equally blown away by her enthusiasm for the program.
It has been the biggest blessing of our homeschool year.
If you had told me my daughter would be successfully (and fairly easily) translating paragraphs from Latin to English and vice versa I would have been doubtful. If you had told me she would look forward to spending 7 hours each Tuesday in academic seminars I would have been even more doubtful.
This is my free spirited child - my musician and bookworm. I was a bit afraid the Challenge Program would stifle her, but it hasn't. She is learning so many new things and developing new interests as a result. The friendships and positivie peer pressure have been HUGE.
Other Randomness From the Week
We are plugging away for one more week, and then we will be off to Florida!
Anna packed more boxes for Operation Christmas Child with the youth group at church, and I cooked a huge crockpot full of chili for their dinner.
We had two families over last weekend for dinner and time at the fire pit.
There's so much going on, but it's all GOOD, so I'm trying to push through the tiredness and am telling myself there will time for rest soon.
Pictured above:
- Cinnamon Apple Cake - this is the BEST fall recipe! It's almost like a coffee cake, but better. I promise if you make it you will love it. One note: only use ROME APPLES in this recipe. I've tried it with others and it just isn't as good!
- Lots of piano practice this week - Anna is in a Sonatina competition tomorrow (Saturday) and the house has been filled with music. I wrote about the long process of learning this piece, and what we learned from it. Hopefully it will encourage you!
- Les Miserables is the current read aloud for Grant and I. We've also been listening to highlights from the musical. We've learned a little about Victor Hugo and the time period during which he lived (this book was a CC recommended reading list, by the way).
- A cold front swept in Tuesday afternoon. Grant and a friend were at the park and it literally blew in while we were sitting there. A funny from that day: the minute the two boys hopped in the back of my van to go to the park they both started chanting "Timeline! Timeline!" - If you're a Classical Conversations person you will understand that they wanted to listen to The Timeline Song. Once again - SO thankful for CC!
I spent a lot of time creating a gift giving guide for parents and friends of LEGO Lovers.
There is also a chance for you to win a 3 month subscription to PLEYGO (the Netflix of LEGOS!) in the post. Take a minute and check out the guide and enter to win!
As always, there are a lot of things I left out of this Collage Friday post, but I could never be done writing this post if I included everything from our week.
Homeschooling Moms: Give yourselves a HUGE pat on the back. Do you realize how much you DO EACH WEEK and the IMPACT YOU HAVE on your children and your entire family? I would love for us all to be in one room together and celebrate the success of just having made it through another week.
If you'd like to link, you can do so in a couple of ways:
- Enter your link below. Be sure to link to your post with photo collages and link back to this post (or include the Collage Friday button on your blog).
- Share your photo collage(s) on Instagram, FB, G+, or Twitter - use the hashtag #collagefriday so I can find you!