Weeks in Review - Grand Prix, Ancient Greece, and A Dead Fish

Ryan Lochte in Lane 3 and Michael Phelps in Lane 4 at the Grand Prix Meet in Indianapolis.

We were at an out-of-state swim meet last week so this is my two weeks in review.  Last week, we attended the Grand Prix in Indianapolis.  Amber made the time cut in the 50 Free to attend and was able to swim two bonus events as well.  The Grand Prix was AMAZING!  This was the fastest and biggest swim meet she has attended so far.  The swim meet was such an incredible experience for Amber - she was thrilled to just be on deck and compete with her swimming heroes.  She had so many exciting experiences there, including warming down in the same lane with Michael Phelps.

She met many Olympians and World Champions at the meet and the majority of them were incredibly friendly and quickly agreed to taking a picture with her.  Amber now has pictures of herself with Ryan Lochte (below), Matt Grevers, Missy Franklin, Jason Lezak, and Michael Phelps.

She attended the meet with three of her teammates and they all had a wonderful time.  In addition to the fabulous experience of just attending the meet, Amber swam well with a personal best time in the 100 Butterfly which set a new team record on her swim team.  One thing's for sure - she's definitely fired-up for the Short Course Gold Championships this week-end!   

Both Mason and Amber will be attending Gold Champs this week-end.  Mason is particularly proud to be attending as he did not achieve the time cuts to attend last year and attended Silver Champs.  

For the first time EVER since our children have been in USA swimming, we'll have a 2 1/2 week break after champs!  Our new swim team has a break after champs until the end of March.  We are looking forward to a lot of quiet evenings at home, sewing, playing games, and watching movies!  I'm not sure how my two chlorine addicts will handle being out of the pool for that long but I'll enjoy the down time!

In addition to swimming, we've also been having school!  We've started studying ancient Greece in history and I've been so happy that my children remember so much of what we studied last year when we did a unit study on ancient Greek Mythology and ancient Greece.  

For our read-aloud, we've been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we absolutely love it!  I can't recommend this read-aloud highly enough - it's absolutely charming and delightfully funny.  I've found myself laughing so hard at times that I couldn't continue reading!  

We are definitely at that time of the school year when my children can see an ending point for some of their subjects on the horizon.  Both Mason and Duncan are nearing the end of their math programs.  Amber is closing in on her grammar program.  

Amber is particularly happy to see an end in sight for Biology.  She is on Module 12 out of 16 now.  Overall, she has enjoyed the course but it has been a LOT of work for her.  Today, we got together with my dear homeschooling friend so her son and Amber could dissect their fish together.  Only one more dissection to go!

All subjects will not be completed, though, before our 9 week summer break and all three of my children will have some schoolwork over the summer - some of it being done by choice.  Amber has decided to just go ahead and start Algebra 2 when she finishes Algebra and to continue working on it at least 2-3 times a week over the summer to keep in fresh in her mind.  

That was our Weeks in Review!  To read about what other homeschool bloggers were doing this week, visit the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.