Week 4

Chris didn't have to work on Monday (Labor Day), so after doing school in the morning (no day off or it messes up our schedule!) we took a (field) trip to Guadalupe River State Park for a lunch picnic and swimming. The kids all had a great time and with the drought here in south Texas, the river was the perfect depth for the kids to play in without being able to go too deep. Gabriel still insisted on wearing his life vest, which was fine with me. The river bed was covered with small rocks and dams had been built up everywhere by other kids, so there was almost no current in the water. Leah was happy to play in the water and throw rocks. The boys made islands with the smaller rocks and thought it was fun to cross the river since it was so shallow. We even brought our dog Chase and made him go in the water. He didn't like it at first (he's had some bad water experiences before...his first water experience was at my Grandma's lake property in Michigan when he walked right off the dock into the water!) but once I pulled him in and he saw that he could touch, he was fine.

We also went on a short hike through the woods, which goes along with out study about forests, but with this pregnancy complication I have, I'm not supposed to exert myself or exercise, so we didn't go too far. We were actually looking for a fishing spot but didn't find one. We did find several horseback riders with their horses that the kids thought were neat but our dog did not and kept barking at them, very annoying but I suppose he was trying to protect us from the huge "beasts".

Speaking of the baby earlier, we did find out that "it" is a GIRL! We're so excited; it will be fun for Leah to have a sister, and it's practical also as they will surely be sharing bedrooms thoughout their childhoods.

The rest of the week of school went well. Christopher is still learning about the United States in Geography. He's really enjoying his spelling and asks to do it first. We use Spelling Power so he only has to study the words that he misses as we test one time through. Then we add those missed words to the next days list. He liked doing the workbook pages last year in Spelling by Sound and Structure and missed them at first, but it makes sense to study only words that you don't know how to spell and Spelling Power isn't reccomended until third grade.

We are learning about Christian heroes in the book Hero Tales and we read about Harriet Tubman this week. Christopher loves this book and I do as well.

We finally did Matthew's worm experiment from a few weeks ago in MFW First Grade. We didn't use separate layers of sand and dirt as instructed, but of the five worms we put in the jar, only one of them died at the top by the next day. When I opened the lid to check on them, it was really stinky and I stuck the jar outside and haven't checked it since. Poor worms. Matthew had a great time putting the worms into the jar though.

Matthew is continuing to learn the long vowel sounds in his phonics studies. I can't say enough how much I love this curriculum that we are using. I am surprised everyday at how easy it is for me to teach and for Matthew to learn.

We started our REACH homeschool c0-op at my church this Friday. It's three hours every Friday morning and we all really enjoy it. Christopher brought home bug containers to collect bugs in for his "All About Bugs" class. He was also excited about what he learned in his "Rocket Science" and "Money Sense" classes. I didn't even think to tell him that he'd have to find his next class on his own, but he did fine. They wear name tags that have their classes each hour on them and he just found someone who had the same class as him. I'm sure he'd have gotten help if he was wandering around anyways.

I'm teaching science for the 3 year old class and the 4 year old class. We did color mixing this week and using paint with 3 year olds wasn't exactly "taking it easy" like I'm supposed to be doing. I was sore for the rest of the day. We will be toning it down for sure for future weeks. There are twelve kids in each class with three teachers, so I had help for it at least.

Normally, we will do school late on Friday, but this week we ended up not, I'm not sure the reason. We don't have a lot to do on Fridays anyways, it is our "light day" for Christopher in ECC and Matthew's lessons are so short anyways. We'll just have extra to do next week.