Fleur de Lis Homeschool Blog: Jul 25, 2017

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

SL Core H Week 22 C July 17-23, 2017 Second trip to Traverse City

SL Core H Week 22 C July 17-23, 2017

Second trip to Traverse City

Hello, Friends!

Monday Giz and Grampy packed up their truck and said goodbye to us. We already miss them!

We had such a nice time with them; especially all the UNO, PIT, and Skip-Bo games. We all laugh so much when playing these card games!!

The cabin we stayed in over the weekend, near Traverse City, MI-upper Michigan on the coast of Lake Michigan.

This week Dd had her audition, trying out for the Advanced Band for West Michigan Homeschool Fine Arts. Next week is her audition for the Intermediate Orchestra, and I am more uncertain about it. Dd has been in their band program for two years now and I know she will be in one of their programs, but we don't know anything about the orchestra program, so that is a bit more uncertain. I'm looking forward to NOT having to remind Dd to practice after the auditions are done!!! Although Dd had her audition on Wednesday we won't find out the results for a week or two.

Dh had been telling his friends at work about our trip up to Traverse City, in northern Michigan, and how beautiful it was up there. One of his co-workers has a little cabin out in the woods and offered for us to stay the weekend since they couldn't go up this weekend, and we jumped at the opportunity. Come to find out, her little cabin was actually a very nice small house that was surrounded by peace and tranquility, my favorite! So, on Friday Dd was going to come home early and we were going to drive up for the weekend. Long story short--Dh's car died on his way home and Dd and I had to take the truck and tow-line out and tow him and his very old car home! Oi. One of my least favorite things--towing a car, especially during rush hour. But, we got home safely and still packed up and headed north.

Violin:

Dd had her last pre-audition violin lesson with Christie, for one hour. Christie is taking the summer off, but let us come to her house to prepare for her audition; isn't she nice! Surprisingly, Dd changed her audition song, so they had to work on that some. Dd had been considering memorizing all the scales required to try-out for the higher class; the Advanced Orchestra, but now has settled on just trying for the Intermediate Orchestra, which is easier and probably a better fit for her. Dd already knows the teacher for Intermediate Orchestra, Mrs. Sooy, since it was her Choir teacher two years ago and they got along SO well. The Advanced teacher is someone Dd doesn't know.

We learned a new game---Minnesota Golf---Dd and Dh were good at it (I wasn't!)

The highlights of our trip:

We arrived at the cabin around 6:30 pm, we had eaten the tuna salad Dd made for us on the drive to save time. As soon as we arrived I got right on making a fire in the firepit so I could have a S'more! Boy, were our S'mores over-due for the summer!!! They had a Minnesota Golf set up for us to use. I was content playing with the fire, and eating marshmallows, but Dh and Dd played quite a few games trying to figure it out. It was very HOT and there wasn't any air conditioning, and we all had a horrible night of sleep. I finally got up and read on the sofa for four hours, glad I brought our Reader, Banner In The Sky, on our trip!

Saturday was a late start, but we made our way to the infamous SLEEPING BEAR DUNES. I have made a whole post of Sleeping Bear Dunes seperately--two posts after this one. We drove through their "scenic view" section, that only cost us $15!! Geesh! Then we found an off road that was along the beach of Lake Michigan and spent the day there. Sophie, our dog, actually, finally learned how to swim! She never has been able to swim before and it was always a bit of a panic with her around water, but this time it finally clicked with her and she was swimming!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Bear_Dunes_National_Lakeshore

Dd and I had a blast finding our souvenir rocks along the beach. This beach was kind of rocky and we wished we would have had some 'water shoes' to walk a little less painfully! The best part of this beach was that we had a really big area all to ourselves!!

Since moving to Michigan we've heard so many people tell us to go up to northern Michigan (especially the Upper Peninsula), but we never really understood WHY. The thing we found while being up there this time, in a much more rural area than the busy Traverse City, we found a number of people to the amount of land to be much more land than people. Like on the beach---each family there had about 1/4 of a mile of buffer space between groups--or more. It was like having the beach to ourselves. After the beach, we headed back to the cabin and more Minnesota Golf! I finally had to play, and tried to lose gracefully! Dd made hamburgers and we also grilled lots of Zucchini from our garden; which was awesome! Then again for dessert, we had S'mores!!!

When we arrived the cabin was way beyond clean and tidy, so we had a big job of cleaning to do on Sunday morning. The kitchen sink was actually spotless when we got there! We divided up the jobs and got the place back to perfection before we left...but, it was hard!!! Luckily, I bought my Dyson portable vacuum to help us.

A church friend told us we had to stop in Traverse City and eat some ice cream from Moomers---we did! The ice cream was nice, but the waffle cone, dipped in chocolate, looked even better than the ice cream! I had to settle for a paper cup. Even better than the cone was the dairy farm the shop was located on; extremely scenic!

The dairy farm that Moomers is on. It really was this beautiful!

We decided to make our drive home fun and scenic. We first went to the ice cream shop we were told was great, which was in Traverse City, and their homemade ice cream was pretty good! Then we drove along the coast all the way home--stopping and visiting three cities specifically: Manistee, Ludington, and Muskegon. We got to see a LOT of Michigan finally! It was nice getting to know this state so much better.

This gnome was in the cabin!

Our lessons this week:

Bible:

I'm using my new Integrated Chronological Bible to tell us the order of reading the New Testament. We read the assignment with our Bible followed by our Believer's Bible Commentary, which goes really in-depth. This week we read:

Luke 1:1-25, Luke 1:25-56, Luke 1:57-80, Luke 2:32-38, Matt. 1: 1-6, Matt 1:18-80, Luke 2: 14-38, 1 Chronicles 1:1-4

Live Like A Jesus Freak: by DC Takj

Ch.9 completed (one chapter left)

Math:

Monday Dd took the math entrance exam to GRCC, but didn't get a high enough score to take their Algebra I.

Math U See: Geometry:

L 14 (not a passing score, will re-do next week)

DuoLingo: German

5:00 hours

Dd is super excited about re-starting German again! So happy she is excited about a subject! Dd likes DuoLingo much better than our expensive Rosetta Stone, of course! DuoLingo is a free app!

Manistee, MI

Poetry:

I asked Dd to pick a poem she would like to memorize, and she picked The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We reviewed it 3 times this week.

Poetry: The Harp and Laurel Leaf

focus on W. Shakespeare this week:

pg 148 (Hamlet section)

pg 140 (Henry V section)

Reader:

Anna and the King by Margaret Landon

Ch's 1-9

Read Aloud:

Banner In The Sky by James Ramsey Ullman

Ch's 1-10

This is an adventure story with a 16-year-old boy as the main character. There is a clear moral code that the other characters are trying to teach--putting other people first, being a servant to others, as a guide you always put the "Herr" (person paying you to guide them up the mountains in Switzerland) first--no matter what. I think if I had to do over I would have skipped this book. It is a "good" book and I like that it has a moral message, but for two weeks reading it doesn't really go beyond that. I guess I'd give it a 3 out of 5 if I were scoring.

Art/Drawing: 10 hours

Dd had a big week of drawing this week; specifically drawing mermaids! She drew while I was reading this week. She also did more Henna drawing on herself.

Art/Painting:

Owl painting: 3:00 hours (paint by numbers)

Purple & Red Flower painting: 2:00 hours on canvas

Dd painting this week

Writing: 2:00 hours

This week Dd got caught up on her Book Reports, or as I've been calling them,'write-up's,' on the books she has been reading or hearing. She did an especially good job on her write-up on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. She also reviewed The Great Trouble and Mary Jones and Her Bible.