Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Europe, Canadian Railway, and more..

This past week, the kids accomplished a lot of their independent work while I worked with Celeste on her math and language arts. It really felt like we had a routine going on!

We were all finished by late morning most days and able to do our "together" subjects (science, history, geography..) in the afternoon. Another routine is our dog sitting always near us while we work:

Part of the language arts that I ask my children to continue with, no matter their age, is reading aloud to me. I quickly snapped this photo of my oldest Adrienne (13) while she was reading a part of Ali Baba to me from her Elson Reader. My two older children never enjoyed "readers" until these, I talked more about them here. 

This week we continued working on our projects. Celeste had picked horses for her lapbook and it starting to come together. She asked everyone to draw a horse for her lapbook, and I have been taking a few notes while we read, which she then copies. We have enjoyed these books and a few more. I will share a booklist when we are all finished with the lapbook:

The library has started to showcase Valentine's Day books, so we brought some home! So far, these are Celeste's favourites:

Andre is also working hard at his research on aliens. He asked all of us to draw a UFO!

Adrienne is also continuing her research on pirates, but I will share more about hers when she is finished.

We have been learning about Europe in our World Geography, and since we are now at the end of it, and moving on to Africa next, I thought it would be nice to add some interesting books to finish off this part of the world. I visited the library, and found a series of 6 DVDs instead. I am always a bit unsure about travel-type DVDs because we have tried them in the past, and they were either very boring or not really appropriate! I wanted to give them another try, and so far we have really enjoyed this series. We watch it during our lunch, instead of me reading aloud, and we have now "traveled" to Germany, Austria, Paris, and various parts of France. Any library should have these type of DVDs, but here is the one we are watching: Best of Europe with Rudy Maxa (Questar). The library had 6 DVDs put together in a set which include: The Heart of France, Molto Italiano, Fairy Tale Europe Germany & Austria, London & Beyond, Wondrous Europe, and Enchanted Italy.

In Canadian History, we continued reading about Confederation. I found online the short film The Ballad of Crowfoot  after we read the lyrics in our Spirit of Canada book :






We also read about the Canadian Pacific Railway and visited the Canadian Pacific website. They have a great section for children about their history. There is also great resources at this site.
Because we are hoping to start our history rotation again next school year, I am including a few world events  starting now with our Canadian History study. We had left off around this time period approximately last year. The curriculum I am using (Modern History Through Canadian Eyes ) is wonderful for this purpose. We talked about the American Civil War and listened to the  Gettysburg Address .

I hope you enjoyed reading our wrap-up. I have to say that these posts are very helpful to me, especially when I feel that we haven't accomplished much in a particular week. When I sit down and write my wrap-up post, I always feel better!

If you would like to read other homeschool families' posts, please visit the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler s blog.