Our Week

So as I've been doing research for using Before Five in a Row with the girls in the future, I came upon a blog with a format I really like and think I'll try.  This might be a common format, but I haven't been reading many blogs lately and this is the first I've seen it.  Anyways, it's quite simple...just blogging each week with updates on everything...family, school, life.  This is the 10th week of the year, and this is what has happened in our life...
Our life.

One week at a time.

2012.

Week 10.

This week. . .

(3.4.12 - 3.10.12)

 

 

A "Welcome Baby" card from Leah.

I have a new nephew and Leah drew a picture of her cousins for the family.  I love when they draw arms and legs that come off of heads.  I actually remember doing this when I was a kid.  (What an odd memory to keep!)

Crazy Glasses Night at Awana

I waited until the last minute (like usual) to check the theme for Awana Sunday evening, and realized we had nothing to use for crazy glasses night.  But I do have plenty of craft supplies, and this is what we came up with.  The googly eyes were definately a hit when the boys showed up.

This week in school, week 25:

• The Black Death aka Bubonic Plague.  This really interested Christopher but there really wasn't all that much information about it that we could find.
• The Hundred Years War and Joan of Arc. 
• Lanscape art emerges (detailed backgrounds as opposed to the previously solid colored backgrounds)
• Christopher finished Singapore Math 6B. The next move is into Saxon 8/7 (pre-algebra) which uses a CD to teach (yay!) but I copied a bunch of reviews from 6A & 6B for him to do before he starts.  Saxon 8/7 is advanced 7th grade/regular 8th grade math so I'd like to make sure he's ready for it.
• We learned about Earth in Astronomy this week.  It has so many qualities that are *perfect* for life, that's it's sad to see people try to explain it away as a random fluke in the universe instead of the perfection of God's creation (didn't I say the same thing when we studies Anatomy and Physiology?)  The older boys each made a compass out of a plastic lid, sewing needle, a bit of cork, a magnet, and thread.  It was really neat to watch it in action...it really worked!

We also:

•  Hung out at home most of the week.  Leah had a fever for about 24 hours on Monday and Gabe got it right after but took a good week to recover.  He took several naps a day and had to miss his basketball game on Saturday because he just didn't have enough energy, even though he only had a fever from Monday through Thursday.  Poor little guy.
• Had annual check-ups for Christopher and Anna.  Both are healthy and while Christopher is still average in height and weight, Anna is still a little thing at about the tenth percentile.  I love it...she's my baby and I like her little.  :o)
• In addition to Gabe not feeling well all week, it was rainy this week.  I'm ready for some good Florida sunshine!
• Got caught up on our 2012 family album on Shutterfly.  Okay, so maybe two months isn't that impressive.  It was still 26 pages worth though...our trip to Disney/Cape Coral took up most of that!

Have a great week!

 

 

 

Our School Weeks 23 & 24

The boys were SO excited to start our Astronomy unit in science.  I'm not sure there is even anything that they don't already know just from reading the many many astronomy books we already have.

So we started out just reading about what astronomy is and then about the sun, which included learning about eclipses.  We did our own version of a solar eclipse, where the moon blocks out all the light from the sun during the day in a certain area. Just an FYI, there will be two solar eclipses in 2012...one on November 13th that will be a full solar eclipse only visable from Australia and that area, and a partial one on May 20th that will be visable from the western United States all the way over to the Japan area.  Which doesn't really do much for us here in Florida.

We're reading through the book "Apologia Astronomy", reading one lesson a week.  I also bought the Notebook Journals that go along with it and the kids do four or five worksheets a week for each lesson.

We started with the planet Mercury, finding out it has no atmosphere and is much like our moon.  We dropped pebbles and marbles into a flour and salt mixture to see how craters form.  Mercury has no atmosphere, so it's always getting hit.

Then the boys made clay models of Mercury and used pencils to imprint different size craters into the clay ball.  We let them dry and one of these days I'll let them paint their model.

Since we're learning about the planets in order of closest to the sun, we learned about Venus in week 24.  Venus is quite different than Mercury in that is has a very thick atmosphere, is very hot all the time, and is covered with volcanoes.

We did this experiment to see how the lava hardens after a volcano erupts and becomes part of and changes the terrain already there.  Basically, we melted butter and poured it over the little glass bowl in the middle so that it flowed down over the flour (land) and then saw that it hardened in place.

So that's where we are in science for now.  Our next stop...earth.

We finished our study of China with take out Chinese food for dinner.  We were supposed to make our own fried rice, but we have chicken stir fry and egg rolls every Wednesday for dinner, so I thought we'd do something different (and give me a break from cooking!)

Some of our work from our China studies...

Next we moved on to ancient Japan, and enjoyed a Japanese snack while we learned about it.

The boys each wrote and illustrated their own Haiku poem.  Hand Guys (imaginary guys that the boys made up years ago) are still a popular topic for everything

.

Christopher's Haiku

 

Matthew's Haiku

Matthew's drawing of a Samurai (Japanese knight)

After Japan, we learned about ancient Russia and tried one of their favorite foods, Borsch.  I did alter it a little bit based on the ingredients I had (omitting the ones I forgot to buy!)  It was okay.  Not a favorite of ours, but it's always fun to experiment with other cultures' recipes.

Christopher working hard on spelling

Legos are always surrounding the boys during school!

The girls are really into coming into the school room to do 'preschool'.  The boys do most of their school during the girls' naptime, but I'll go in with them at other times and give them 'preschool' activities.

And then it's always fun to capture the girls' sweetness.  Leah has memorized this book and likes to "read" it to Anna.

Here's a video from a few months ago of Leah "reading" this book (with a Mickey Mouse stamp on her cheek.)  Enjoy!

You'll have to scroll to the bottom to pause the music if it is playing so you can hear Leah.

Eleven Years Old

This handsome young man made me a mommy eleven years ago.  As I'm sure I say every year around this time...it has gone by way too fast.  Eleven!  That means we only get him for about seven more years.  That makes this momma sad.

We had a hard time figuring out how to celebrate his special day this year.  Is he too old for the traditional kids' party games?  He still enjoys playing them at his siblings' parties.  Should we just take him somewhere special? 

In the end, we decided on a very informal party with a few of his friends.  And it made him very happy. 

Chris (our family cake decorator) asked Christopher what kind of cake he wanted, and of course it had to do with Legos.  The Lego company has a line of "Lego Heroes" and the boys are so into them right now.  So a Lego Hero cake it was.

There was no "Pin the Tail on the Donkey", but the boys did play a lot of Legos and their Creationary Lego game.

The girls hung out around the house most of the party, which luckily, the boys are fine with (as long as they are not destroying Lego creations!)  And the girls wanted to be included in the party group picture.

But we managed to get one of just the boys too.  I'm so thankful that the older boys would never think of excluding their younger brother(s). 

Even though Christopher was thrilled to get new Lego Hero sets, this space set has been long awaited.

He wasted no time putting it together!

And of course he put together his new Lego Heroes in a hurry also.

And while I know that I am a bit biased, I really think that I have such a great son with Christopher.  I am so thankful with what God is doing in his life through (and in spite of!) our parenting.  He has such godly character traits and I am so proud of how he is living his life.  He is such a rule-follower, which means we can trust him with so many things.  He loves his brothers and sisters so much and while he does get grumpy sometimes, he's generally a fun kid to be around.  While I do think that he is growing up way too fast, I am excited to enjoy the ride with him.  I am so thankful for homeschooling so we can spend so much time together before his next season of life...in just seven short years.