Weekly Wrap- Up: Unschooling Summer Week 3

It's been another busy week around here.  The boys have been hard at work enjoying their time off.  We've been strawberry picking, checked out a science & technology fair, and enjoyed spending time with family & friends at the lake.  We had a few rainy days where we stayed home working on our own projects and we had lots of sunny days where we enjoyed getting out and about too.  It's been fun and the time just keeps flying right by!  Here's a look at some of the things we did this week:

A wooden loader kit that Ian put together this week 

History/ geography/ Government--  We learned all about ancient Egypt by watching a two part series Animated History With Pipo.  Alec has started reading the book TombQuest and spent time playing TombQuest on Scholastic too; which has been feeding into his Egypitan obsession.  We spent a good 30 minutes on Tuesday talking about voting, taxes, and comparing our town government with the state and federal governments.  I try really hard to present both (all) sides of the arguments and show them what a difficult time those in office have trying to make everyone/someone/anyone happy. Our town has been working on this year's budget and the boys have heard many, many conversations about it.  We like to bring them with us whenever we vote and explain what we're voting on, why we chose to vote the way we voted, and what impact the voters have.  Evan started talking about the laws he'd make if he were president and how he'd change things.  I explained how our government works with a system of checks and balances so no one person has all the power.

Technology-- The younger two boy spent almost an entire morning playing around with coding with Kodu Game Lab.  They spent many hours throughout the week playing Minecraft, playing with their Kindles and watching YouTube videos about playing video games.

You can read more about why my kids play are allowed to play video games here

 Art--  Ian had a model car kit in our cabinet and with a rainy Monday at home decided to try tackling it.  Next thing I knew he spent the whole week making models!  We had to go to the store to buy more paint and he bought another model kit so he kept switching back and forth between two different model kits.  All three boys spent some time bracelet weaving with their loom bands.  Alec watched a few YouTube videos and learned some new bracelets; butterfly & fireworks (though with the colors he chose we thought they looked more like flowers).  Alec has completed two more Aquarella paintings; one on horses and one on turtles.  He looked up Minecraft animals and tried to pattern his paint colors after the animals he found.

Alec's flower bracelet 

Ian painting his model; it's a big rig 

Alec's horse painting; complete with white spots

His turtle painting 

Science--  Alec spent a morning making Popsicle stick chain reactions.  We watched a video on them and he was hooked.  Alec and Evan also spent a morning making slime.  Alec had the idea of making slime in two different colors to represent slime and lava in Minecraft.  We learned about how strawberries grow, what their plants looks like and how to pick the best, ripest strawberries.  We checked out the science and technology fair and got to see robots at work, test out new video games, and try all sorts of hands- on experiments.  We eagerly watched the finch that landed on our windowsill one morning noting all the colors, the size of the bird compared to other birds we've seen, and watched in awe as it looked all around trying not to move or scare it away.  We fed the ducks and ducklings that came to our beach and watched them waddle all over the place scooping up sand, rocks, pine cones, etc. and spitting them all back out.  We love watching the ducks grow and change each year.

feeding the ducklings 

Slime making ingredients 

They just love playing with slime and stretching it 

Popsicle stick chain 

using remote control robots at the technology fair (you can read about it here)

Yummy strawberries! 

Language arts-- We've continued reading book upon book this week; We read a few more chapters in The Phantom Tollbooth, Ian is finishing up Catching fire & Mr. Cooper is Super! Evan has finished one story in Frog and Toad, read a few Dick and Jane stories and Pete the Cat: Pete's Big Lunch.  We started listening to how to Train Your Dragon on CD while we're driving around running errands.  The boys also did a bit of writing with a questionnaire about dad for father's day.  We started filling these out a few years ago and it's always fun to see what answers the boys will come up with.

Cooking/Cleaning/ Self-help-- The boys all learned how to make chocolate covered strawberries this week.  We made them a few different times and the last time we combined white chocolate and milk chocolate.  They drizzled the chocolates together and Alec even made a tuxedo strawberry.  It was fun and yummy work and not nearly as hard as they thought it would be.  They all helped me clean the house, do the laundry and make beds this week too.  They help cook and they were fabulous at the grocery store this week; we tried out a new store and we were trying to keep track of how much we were spending.

One of the tuxedo strawberries; complete with "buttons"... can you see them?

Learning a Trade--  Ian went to mow the lawn for his great, great, aunt again and Alec got to go to the forge and start working on making a heart shape with the heated metal.  He came home all excited about what the finished product is going to look like.