Review Week

I'm a bit of a Type A personality. I can tend to be pretty task and schedule focused. So, during a normal school week, we've got certain things to learn and a certain schedule to follow and I tend to pretty much stick to it by the minute. This means we typically get a lot accomplished, but can also miss out on fun activities because I don't "have time" for them.

And this is why I love review week. Every 6 week we have a week set aside where we change the schedule all up for that week. We do not have to learn any new material, only review what we've already learned and and do fun things.  I love it! It gives me the feeling of freedom to be creative and do all the things I would normally like to do, but don't. I love the change of pace, coming up with fun ideas, and learning in new ways. Instead of having a math lesson and working in our math books, we play math games every day. Instead of having a typical history or science lesson, we watch movies related to what we've been learning and do science projects. We may put on a play, or a concert, go on a field trip, or make inventions. You get the idea.

Jimmy is actually not as much of a fan of review week as I am. He doesn't so much like the change - it feels like a lot of work and somewhat uncertain to him. But the funny thing is that he has no problem during the normal school day deviating far from the set tasks or schedule. Because of this he probably needs review week a lot less than me. This is why we make such a great team.

During review week we also work really hard on our cumulative "memory work" that we have been learning all year, with a big test at the end of the week. This week the kids had to know 18 Ancient history "facts", 18 Earth Science "facts",  all of their propositions and helping verbs, all the Latin noun declensions, be able to name and locate 90 different geographic paces and features on the world map,  know all of their math times tables and basic unit conversions, and recite 144 events in a timeline of word history beginning at creation and going through completion of the transcontinental railroad. It is pretty impressive all the things their little brains can remember.

Ok, well here are a few highlights from this review week.

Field trip with other home schoolers to Wynne Farms:

 

Science Projects:

 

Art Show Awesomeness: