We had such a nice week. Wednesday we went to our homeschool group's geography club. The country was South Africa and the kids did oral presentations on various subjects. J joined up with her friend ("A" - her co-entrepreneur with the juice stand) and did a presentation on native languages. W did his on typical food. We listened to some great ones, too. And the potluck South Africa-themed lunch was really fun. I decided it's safer that I don't cook, so we stopped on the way over and picked up some pineapple-coconut ice cream for everyone.

Thursday the kids had their weekly circus class. J has almost perfected back- and front flips. I can see W has gotten way more coordinated over the months as well. I'm sure what he has learned in this class will help him in football - which starts this Sunday! There are 2 more circus classes this season and then we'll see if we want to do it all again in September.

Today was an awesome homeschool group trip to the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility in Long Island. It was for older kids so I dropped J (and A) off and took W to the nearby park. I gave J my camera and she took some cool pictures of the facility. The kids got a tour around the place and saw huge holding areas of garbage and learned about the whole process.



After that, I took all the kids for a bite to eat and dropped all of them off at the Improv class at the library. This was the last class and the parents got to sit in and watch. They played a bunch of games, learning about stage presence, direction, getting various scenes across using only pantomime, working off each other, and using tons of imagination. That was over at 5 and we drove W out to Cub Scouts for his 5:30 meeting. He had the best time. He has already made some friends and is really looking forward to the big Fishing Derby camping trip next weekend. B is excited to go, too, and has started making lists of what they should bring. Tonight's meeting was all about the trip - the boys made a paper plate fish craft and got a bunch of info sheets on identifying different fish. I left W there and dropped J off at dance (which is only a few blocks from Cub Scouts - yes, I planned it that way, lol). There's only one more week before the recital and then it's the Summer Intensive. B is in the recital parent number and will be there with J until about 9:30pm.

The kids want to continue with the scheduled academics over the summer. I spent a lot of time going over various websites and the final consensus was a loose combination of AmblesideOnline (years 6 and 1) and Mater Amabilis (years 3 and 1B). The book lists are fabulous and the lesson plans they have are great to use as a guide for the day. J is excited that yesterday we finally bought Tom Sawyer. She also picked out the next Summer Bridge book (7th-8th grade). She's always loved those from when we first started homeschooling. They're just a bright, colorful, hodge-podge of activities to do. W's just happy keeping busy with anything, lol. He likes writing and math a lot. I see a big difference in the kids when we spend at least an hour on academics. Their whole day is a lot more focused and they seem to get along better, too. It's interesting.