Our Week in Review

In history we completed the first week of a three week mini unit on the Civil War.  War is awful, of course, but if it were possible to have a war be near and dear to your heart, the Civil War would be it for us.  Our summer 2011 vacation was to Gettysburg, PA, and that was just an unforgettable trip for us.  So in learning about the Civil War now, we have a lot of memories to tie information to.  We even rode on horseback through the Confederate side of the Gettysburg battlefield ~ definitely a highlight for us!  We can picture exactly where they fought.  That is a very cool aspect of educational vacations!

Our older students learned about the reasons for the war, the "politics" behind it so to speak, as well as some of the early battles of the war.  Our two youngest boys focused on the life of Abraham Lincoln.  I was able to get some good reading in with those two this week (doesn't always happen) so that was a happy thing for me!

Our second daughter H joined our virtual co-op this week for an online history discussion, and she LOVED it!  She did a great job too ~ participating eagerly and adding much to the conversation.  So proud of her!

Our children pushed really hard to have Valentine's Day off school, but since I'm a mean mom and teacher we did school anyway. :-D  (in my defense, we did take a surprise snow day last week, so I'm not all that mean)  There was surprise candy waiting for each child at the breakfast table.

And a heart shaped meatloaf for dinner!

We are reading Across Five Aprils for our read aloud during this study of the Civil War, and we look forward to that time each afternoon.