a bit of an update

We've had somewhat of a rough start to our week, so a quick update and some cute photos is about all I can offer at this point.

The weekend was blue-blazing hot, and the kids sought relief in the sprinkler at home, and with water balloons at their cousin's birthday party. We also took the boys to see a local High School's wonderful production of "Beauty and the Beast" and I'm kicking myself for not having brought my camera to capture the wonder and excitement on their faces as they watched the story come to life on stage in front of them. More musicals are definitely in our future!

We started the week, as usual, with journals (J's above, Zoo Boy's below). From there things fell apart, between catching up on stuff I should have done last week but was away, and Zoo Boy coming down with a stomach bug/possible strep throat. We also had some wicked thunderstorms move through, and there's the looming chaos of J's chorus show at the end of the week. All of which made me shift gears and not start our sage story this week -- instead I'm doing a brief re-awakening math week with the four processes ahead of some worksheet type work I want to bring them this summer. (I'll talk about my summer plans at some point, but basically they kids will be on their own to complete work pages at whatever pace they want to work on them, in both writing and math, as well as a few other skills, just as a way of keeping up on their skills while we take a longer-than-normal summer break.)

We met our friends Kyra and Fluffy at the Springfield Museums, where we hung out, destroyed the earth with asteroids, and spent way too much time sitting in front of a brooder watching baby Emus.

Seriously, are they not tremendously cute?!?!?!:

We also signed J up for a couple of summer classes there (chess, and a science class on natural phenomenon such as volcanoes and lightening). And we visited the Dr. Seuss sculpture garden, where J rested in the "waiting place" and recited quite a chunk of "Oh, the Places You'll Go".

Handwriting samples from this week are below. I'm VERY pleased with how the boys are doing with this. So are they, and justly so. We're working with some tongue twisters, both with recitation and writing, during this last block before summer.