Weekly Wrap Up ~ A New Year Begins

Well, this week we kicked off our new school year. This year we are doing a fun unit study using the "Little House on the Prairie" series and I think we are really going to enjoy it and make a lot of memories along the way. We are using this wonderful resource from A Journey Through Learning called the Prairie Primer Lapbook. It's actually called a Binder-Builder because it's much more than a lapbook.

Here are some of the activities we did this week while reading "Little House in the Big Woods." We made homemade butter, and this activity required A LOT of shaking so we all took turns.

When we were done shaking, we put it in a colander to drain off the buttermilk. Then we took it and stirred it around to smooth it out and get rid of more liquid. Finally, we put it in a serving dish.

Remember that buttermilk? I used it to make homemade waffles to celebrate National Waffle Day, which was August 24th! We also enjoyed our homemade butter with some homemade bread later in the day for an afternoon snack! Everyone loved it!

Here's a picture of all three of the children working on different elements of our lapbook. We are all pitching in together because there is a narration sheet and usually 2-3 mini books to put together each day. But this is a great way to pull out the lessons from each day's reading and make the learning more real and memorable.

Of course we did more than just have fun learning about Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie. We also did other things like reading and math this week.

On Tuesday night, the children got to use a special prize they received from the library's summer reading program at chick-fil-a! They spent a lot of time reading this summer and I love our county's library system and summer reading program!

Don't forget about physical education! The children enjoyed lots of outdoor time this week because the weather has been gorgeous! One evening our entire family played a couple of games of basketball together. I really loved it when my children were babies and toddlers, but I am also loving this season of parenthood as well. It is so much fun to play ball together as a family.

Our first week of school has been fun. I know not every week is going to be full of fun activities, but I do hope to keep this momentum going throughout the year. I want to finish the school year with as much excitement, preparation, and organization as I have started with. I truly believe the Lord has convicted me of a character flaw in my life - I don't always finish strong in all areas of my life. God definitely uses our children to refine us, doesn't He? How is your year going so far?

This post is linked up over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to her Weekly Wrap-Up post! Click over and see what other home educating families have been up to this week!