Weekly Wrap-up: Unschooling?

We are not unschoolers.  I am a planner by nature and even as a child I would make To Do lists so I could check off the things I had done that day.  But this week we set aside our schedule and our checklist - and I'm still breathing (slow and concentrated but still ok).  Ms. Q is going to Washington DC with her grandparents this weekend and left Thursday morning so this made our week a day and a half shorter than usual.  I decided that we would not try to squeeze our regular school week into the three days but since we were off last week I didn't want to have another week off.  The answer than was unschooling.

Monday we had school at the zoo.  It was a beautiful day!  Ms. Q is old enough now to read about the animals she finds interesting and only needs to ask me what a few words are.  She was really excited about this and read most of the animals information plaques to me.  Little M practiced his letter skills by telling me what letters the animals' names started with.  Last week we borrowed a sign language video about zoo animals from the library and he excitedly showed me the ones he remembered.

There are more pics of our wonderful day HERE.

Tuesday brought the return of thunderstorms.  The kids love watching thunderstorms and were happy to sit in the front window to watch the storm.  Ms. Q and I watched a documentary on the first monarchs of England while Little M worked on the computer.  We managed to get to the library between rain clouds.  Ms. Q has been diligently working on posts for her blog and needed some more books to read.  She proudly published her first post on Kid's Story Central.  If you are interested in great children's stories and would like some crafts and recipes to go along with them, check it out.  She's going to try to have a new book out each week.

Wednesday was another rainy day.  Ms. Q is working on her Travel Right Try-It badge for Brownies, so she finished writing down some safety rules, created lists for packing a suitcase and a daypack for her trip, created a busy kit for the train, and prepared a travel journal to use during her trip to Washington DC this weekend. She also had a guitar lesson and karate class.  That pretty much finished up our day - it went by surprisingly quick.

Thursday morning Ms. Q left for her grandparents' house and will be taking the train from Wilmington DE to Washington DC.  She's never been on a train before and is very excited.  Fred and I took her to Washington DC a few years ago but she doesn't remember.  Last summer we used the movies Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a unit study and created a lapbook about it.  Ever since then she has been asking to go to the Smithsonian.  With her birthday coming up, her grandparent's thought this trip would be a great idea!  Can't wait till she gets back to hear all about it.

Little M, Baby C, and I entertained ourselves on Thursday by making these cute paper bag puppets and putting on a puppet show.

We also went outside and enjoyed the nice sunshine.

Friday Fred took Little M to the Discovery Children's Museum. They had a great time and it was nice for them to spend some one-on-one time together.

Baby C and I caught up on some chores and housework.  (No pictures of that!)

As far as "unschooling" goes I would say it was a pretty successful week.  But I can't wait to get back to that schedule and checklist!