Weekly Wrap up 5-13-16--Last day of Coop

Firedrake graduates tomorrow from 8th grade!  She is now officially in 9th grade, my how times flies.  My parents are in town so they can attend the Graduation ceremony with us, so I have a full house.  I won't have any pictures until the next weekly wrap up.

This week was the last week of coop I tried to talk the kids into letting me take their picture for the last day but they weren't interested:(

We attended a Cardinals baseball game.  Firedrake opted not to go as she isn't much of a baseball fan.

Unfortunately the Cards lost:(

Firedrake has worked two 4 hours  shifts at the World Bird Sanctuary and has come home very excited! volunteering 4 hours a week for the rest of the summer and we will see if she can continue once school resumes.

She was excited because she helped feed the birds and is learning all about the wild birds.  Won't be long before she knows more than her parents:)

Kids got their reports cards from coop and got A's in each of their four classes!I am very proud of them as this was the first year where they had weekly homework, quizzes, mid terms and even final exams to do for classes.
Firedrake was taking Literature, Spanish level 1, drama and watercolor painting
MarioFan was taking art, intermediate Spanish, computer, and drama



At home we are learning about the Progressive era in US history and comparing it to the Guilded Era.

Learning about the legislation that was passed  during this time

Comparing the the two eras...at some point I hope to have the kids make a poster to hung up in our school room.  We  watched videos from Crash course on the Guilded age and the Progressive age. We are also reading several books, researching the eras on the internet to get a better understanding how one era lead to the other.

My own project this week has been to fixed two of our kitchen chairs which had broken seat bottoms. Luckily while I lived in England a very dear friend  (Waves to Rebecca) helped me recover my dining room chairs and that gave me the needed skills and confidence to tackle this project!

This was not an inexpensive kitchen set so I was quite annoyed when after only two years the seat bottoms were breaking.

After removing the seat bottoms and removing the fabric I could see the chairs were made out of inexpensive pressed board.  The chair frame was still intact.

I bought some 3/4 inch plywood and drew the shape of the seat on it and my husband cut them out.

Luckily I could salvage the foam as it was not in too bad a shape.

I also carefully removed the fabric and was able to save it to reuse.

Once the new boards were cut I placed everything together to make sure it would fit properly

Then began stapling the foam, fabric to the new seat bottom.

The new seat back 

And now my chairs look as good as new.  I am thinking about redoing all the chairs soon, since the original seat bottoms are very poorly constructed.