Weekly Wrap-Up

(Note: I meant to post this last weekend, and then forgot.) I'm trying to get back to blogging regularly, so I thought I'd start out by participating in the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Every morning this week, Lucy went to architect camp at a local university. This involved driving 45 minutes each way, but it was worth it. The camp was fantastic -- Lucy learned a lot and she loved it! She brought home a bridge that she built, and a bunch of drawings. Due to my husband's somewhat flexible work schedule, he was able to drive Lucy up there 3 days, so that I didn't have to wake up Matthew and drag him up there everyday. The other 2 days, I woke Matthew up, and we spent the morning wandering around the nearby bigger town, doing things like eating bagels at Panera, looking at the fountains at Lowe's and going to the library.

Our afternoons were quite busy as well, with things like playing with friends, art class, and dentist appointments. We're continuing to work on few subjects in the summer as we have time, so Lucy did a bit of math (we're still trying to get through Math U See multiplication), some handwriting, we read out loud quite a bit, and Lucy read lots of books as she does most every week. We also continued with history (The Story of the World) because Lucy loves the subject and she asked to keep doing it. One of Lucy's school friends is coming over for history class this summer. It seems that public school doesn't teach much history, beyond the major events of American history. Rather, they teach "Social Studies," and I'm not exactly sure what that is. It seems to be a lot of talk about communities and neighborhoods, but I wonder why, if you live in the world, you would need academic instruction in that sort of thing! It seems strange to me that schools don't think children need to learn much history, and that they don't learn it chronologically. History is a story, after all, and stories only make sense when they are read from beginning to end. But anyway, more on history in another posting.