Weekly Report~ September 26, 2008

Better late than never! I think this may be a trend with me. I'm finding it difficult to complete and post a weekly report before the week is actually even over (Friday mornings), half the time guessing what will be accomplished that day. Not only that, but it takes awhile to review everything we've done that week and to type it all up.

I created this blog for many reasons, but my main goal was to utilize it as a means of keeping track of our homeschooling, not only for accountability to the state, but also for myself. It is an important aspect of my blog that I insist on keeping up with. One thing I may try in the future (especially once B starts school and I'll have two weekly reports to maintain) is to post bi-weekly or even monthly. This may help keep me consistent enough to stick with it. We shall see.

A Friend From Down Under

We began our unit on Australia last Monday, reading Koala Lou and following up on it by learning more about marsupials and locating Australia on our globe. At the same time, we were also finishing up our animal unit in science, and I thought a "field trip" to the Rochester Fair would be a fun way to round out our studies. There are always plenty of pigs, cattle, sheep, poultry and other farm animals to visit. I was on the lookout for an emu, after seeing one in the poultry barn a few years back. I figured it would give the boys a chance to be up close and personal with Australian wildlife, and get them excited to read about more. To my dismay, there were no emus in the barns this year. But a bigger surprise awaited us next to the circus tent. Not only did we get to see two beautiful giraffes, a zebra, and some monkeys, but of ALL THINGS there was a grey kangaroo and a wallaby family. The boys excitedly stuck their fingers through the wires of the cage trying to pet the kangaroo, laughing as it hopped around on its extremely large feet. At the wallaby cage, a most wonderful little gift awaited our eyes. We were petting the mommy wallaby and watching her jump around the cage when all of a sudden we noticed a little HEAD sticking out of her belly!! She was carrying an adorable baby around in her pouch, then he was out and exploring on his own, and finally he was nudging her to nurse.... and we got to see it all first hand. I could've stayed there for an hour trying to get a good photo, but with two busy boys by my side we eventually had to keep moving on.

Later that night after downloading the pictures onto my computer, I was thrilled to find the above photo of the baby giving his mommy a kiss. Too sweet!

Weekly Report~ September 19, 2008

I've neglected my blog over the past few weeks, but only from your end as a reader. Whenever I had a few moments, I was downloading photos, working on my weekly reports, and thinking about all of the things I want to write about. And that's as far as I would get. I'm not as computer savvy as a lot of bloggers out there, so it takes me a l-o-n-g time to figure out simple things, like adding my weekly report as a document (above). This is the spreadsheet I created to record everything we do each week. Once a week I type it up, print it out, and add it to my Teacher's Notebook. In addition to that, I was trying to come online and re-type everything on my blog as the Weekly Report. It was redundant and time-consuming, which is why it hasn't been done lately. So today I *think* I've finally figured it out!! Double click on the image above to get a closer look at our week. We've been busy, but we've been having a lot of fun.