Swimming, spelling and Washington, D.C.

The kids have had a great week this week,

working hard both physically and mentally

after a non-existent school week last week.

(When mom gets sick, school suffers.)

On Tuesday, both kids swam 1,800 yards 

at practice!

A mile is 1,760 yards.

That's a lot of swimming.

On Wednesday, Scott swam 1,750 yards

and Mylee swam 2,000.

2,000!

That's about 1,975 more yards than I can swim. 

:)

Needless to say, they have aches and pains,

but they've slept pretty well.

Today is the last practice of the week.

We'll see how many yards they swim tonight.

Maya went to her second Spelling Bee practice on Tuesday

and did really, really well.

She's gotten through the whole list

and can spell every single word.

She's been working very, very hard

and we bought her the 

Scripp's Spelling Bee ds game, 

so she's been playing with that, as well.

The local bee will be on Saturday, January 15th

at Cameron Village Library.

Wish her luck!

We just got confirmation today

that we will be traveling to Maryland with Steven

in mid January.

He is attending a class there

and we are going to tag along.

We will be staying in Hanover, MD,

which is about 25 miles outside of Washington, D.C.

The kids and I are going to spend the week

going into the city each morning,

do some sight seeing

and a bunch of hands on learning.

Education on the go.

Isn't home schooling awesome????

No book clubs for the month of December,

but the kids are still reading.

Scott is reading Percy Jackson & the Olympians:

The Lightning Thief

by Rick Riordan,

and Maya is reading

Pretty Monsters

by

Kelly Link.

Both Maya and I loved the Percy Jackson series

and I am excited by the fact

that Scotty seems to really like it so far as well.

One more exciting piece of news...

both Maya and Scott won their age division

in the Creative Communications Essay contest!

Woo hoo!

The essay Maya entered was Venus,

and Scotty entered Moths and Butterflies.

You can read each of them under their tabs

on the homepage.

Please check out the new paper Maya just wrote

on President Lincoln, also under her tab.

It's a very well researched

and nicely written paper.

Who knows...

you might just learn something!

(I know I did!)