Weekly Wrap Up - A Mountain, Some Braves, and More

Okay, let me start this post with promising you that we did actually "do" school this week. However, I didn't take any pictures of that happening. Not one single picture. Mainly because we didn't do anything super fun, but also because my camera was still packed up for a good part of the week.

Why was my camera packed up you might be asking?! Well, let me share with you.

Last Saturday was October 9th. This just so happens to be a very important day in this household. We have not one, not two, but THREE birthdays on October 9th! My twins were born on my husband's birthday, so needless to say, October 9th is a day of celebration around here. This year the bigger boys didn't want a birthday party, but a birthday trip! We decided to head over to Atlanta, GA for the weekend. We had so much fun! Friday, we stopped at Stone Mountain and we all hiked all the way to the top! It was fun, but I must tell the truth - it was work!

 On their actual birthday, we headed over to Six Flags with my husband's aunt and her two kiddos.  They are like Six Flag experts, so they had the hook up with some good deals and we were able to enjoy the day and still make it back to my husband's grandmother's house to watch the very disappointing Alabama game.  I won't even talk about it!  (But I will mention that getting to stay at my husband's grandmother's house and getting to eat the yummy food she cooked all weekend definitely made up for Alabama's sad performance!)

Sunday was the final day and the ultimate gift!  We all got to go see the Atlanta Braves vs. Giants in a playoff game.  We all had so much fun even if the Braves lost! :-(

 They had a fun little area where the kids could play a little game of wiffle ball with some Turner Field employees.

 Here was another little area where kids could practice running bases.  Always nice to get out some of that extra energy!

They also had an area where the kids could pitch some baseballs and have their pitching speed clocked.  This was really cool.  I can't remember exact speeds, but I think the twins were like 35 mph and little man was throwing the heat at 37 mph.  Ha!  While we were waiting in line, this teenager/college kid got up and he was pitching in the low 70's.  I was absolutely blown away at how fast that ball was moving.  I simply can not even imagine how the pros manage to hit a ball moving 90 something mph. 

On the school front, I ordered this book a few weeks ago:

This was the first week that I was able to do some of the activities included and I am really excited about what all it has to offer.  We didn't start from the beginning, but instead jumped straight to Self Control - Controlling our Tongues.  I think it is going to be a great addition to our Bible curriculum and hopefully help me to raise up some amazing men!

People often ask me what my kids do during the day when they are not doing school, because let's face it - we don't do school ALL day.  We take lots of breaks.  Also, people want to know what the other kids do while I am working one on one with someone else.  And like I always say, "Well, that depends."  Sometimes they might be doing their independent work.  They might be outside playing.  They could be doing some silent reading.  They could be building and designing incredible architectural masterpieces (Okay so maybe it's a log cabin out of lincoln logs, but don't tell him that!)

 Here is another game that all of my boys love to play.  It's called Crossbows and Catapults.  This is a small set up.  I will forewarn you that this game has been known to take over entire rooms.

What has your week been like?  Don't forget to head over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what everybody else has been up to this week!

Weekly Wrap Up - The One With Lots of P.E.

As most of you know, I have three boys.  Three busy, active, all boy - boys.  Therefore, P.E.  is a VERY important part of our school day.  It is a big benefit of homeschooling for our family.  When I start to see my boys "zone out,"  we take a break.  Go outside.  Ride bikes, run to the stop sign and back (we live at the bottom of a cul de sac so we are lucky to have very little traffic), play basketball, play kickpen (or some peole call it kickball), throw the baseball, kick the soccer ball, and they always love a good ole game of tackle football.  I've never set aside a specific time of our day for p.e.  I have no doubt that we get above and beyond the required time, but I've often wondered how other homeschool parents "do" p.e.  I've seen the books, but never bought one.  What do you do at your house?  Here's some pictures of us doing our "p.e."

 This is something that they boys enjoy doing with daddy.  Shootin' guns.  (Okay, so it is only a BB gun, but it just sounded so, Alabama, to say "Shootin' guns.")

Let's see. . . I'm pretty sure we did some academic stuff this week, too.  Of course, we did the basics.  The bigger boys are working on writing a friendly letter in grammar.  It just cracked me up because D decided that he wanted to write his letter to our neighbor, Mr. Fitzpatrick.  Well, first he wanted to write it to our dog, Enoch.  However, when he figured out that we were actually going to mail the letter, he realized that wouldn't work out so well.  So, sorry grandmas, Mr. Fitzpatrick is getting the letter.  Maybe he will change his mind during the revising and proofreading steps!

I mentioned last week, that the boys were going to start reading The Courage of Sarah Noble.  I wasn't sure how they would like it, but they seem to think it is okay.  I guess it earned some "coolness" points because it is based on a true story.  It is hard to not dig the story of a little 8 year old girl (same age as my boys) that traveled into the New England wilderness with her father in 1707 to cook for him and help him get their new house built and settled. Next up on their reading list is The Matchlock Gun. 

Science didn't involve any experiments this week, but we made up for it in History.  We talked about The Lost Colony of Roanoke and made our own guesses as to what happened to the settlers.  We talked about Jamestown, Captain John Smith, and Pocahontas.  We spent a lot of time on the life of a colonists.  Here the boys colored and cut out clothes that a colonial man would have worn.  They got a good laugh at some of his clothes.

 (So, maybe D got a little bit colorful with his clothing!)

We also talked about the homes in colonial America.  This was a cute idea from History Pockets.

 We even gave writing with quills a chance.  I didn't have any ink on hand (not that we would have used it if I had, but you know) so we just used some washable paint.  Either way, I think the kids appreciate their pencils, pens, markers, and crayons a little bit more!

 We ended the week talking about the pilgrims' voyage to America on The Mayflower.  Our info said that the Mayflower was about 90 ft. long.  That seemed pretty big, so we went out into our cul de sac to see just how big that was. 

It didn't really seem so big once we started talking about 102 passengers, scurvy, and no real bathrooms.  A whole new respect.  I'm just sayin'! 

What have y'all been up to this week?

You never know . . .

what you are going to hear at my house.  You probably never know what you are going to hear at anybody's house that has kids.  Mine is no exception!  These kiddos crack me up!

Little man (to my mother in law) - "Hey MiMi.  Did you know that the Braves made it to the showoffs?" 

Haha!  My mother in law said she didn't have the heart to tell him it was called the playoffs.  Hopefully, he will figure it out this weekend when we go to a game.

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Okay, before any judgement is placed - we use Sequential Spelling (which we are loving btw) and so it is hard to judge the level of our spelling words by just one word.  Moving on . . .

Me - "Your word is 'freed.'  Do you know what year Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves?"

Drew - "Abraham Lincoln didn't free the slaves.  Moses did."

Ha! I guess I should have been more specific.  We just started American History this year.  We'll get there.

Weekly Wrap Up - More Fieldtrips, Seriously?!

We have had another great week.  Well, great for the most part.  I did have a um, moment, on Thursday when I thought I had just about lost it, but I pulled myself together and we managed to have a really nice rest of the day.  That "moment" deserves a whole post of its own, but I just don't have the time for it.  I will tell you that it involved  light sabers and three little boys that had apparently lost their "listening ears."  So moving on . . .

This doesn't really have anything to do with our weekly wrap up, but I have just been amazed this week at how much I am learning as I homeschool my boys.  I mean, I graduated from The University of Alabama with honors; I am certified by the state to teach PreK - 6th grade and our 3rd grade history program is teaching me all kinds of things!  Do you know who Esteban was and what he did?  I didn't!  So moving on, again . . .

Math - Everyone is still just trucking along.  Little man is working on counting by 5's, skip counting, odd/even numbers, some measurement, and reviewing facts that we have already learned - (+1, +0, -1, +2, and doubles).  The older boys are reviewing square roots, addition with carrying, subtraction with borrowing, and some multiplication facts.  We introduced the last two this week (3's and 6's).  My oldest memorizes these math facts very quickly, but the younger twin struggles a little bit more.  He is still kinda caught up on the 8's.  I'm looking for some kind of math fact review that they could do online.  I just want the basic facts to be like second nature to them. Nothing too intensive, just a good review for about 10 minutes a day.  Any suggestions?

History - I mentioned Esteban earlier (who - by the way - was a black slave that was a scout in Texas and Mexico in the 1530's.  He went with Friar Marcos to search for Cibola, but was truly the leader of this exploration.  Coronado later followed his path.).  That is where we are in our Part 1 of American History.  However, there is a group in our homeschool co-op that is studying Alabama History and they had a great fieldtrip planned on Tuesday.   We were invited to tag along and we were excited!  So fun!  We started our trip with a stop by Julia Tutwiler's gravesite.   

After this, we kept on driving to visit an antebellum home in Greensboro, AL.  It was called Magnolia Grove.  I really enjoyed this, but my kids were not nearly as impressed as I was.  The house had been incredibly preserved and had a lot of original furniture.  I loved it.  They said that we could take pictures inside if we could turn off our flash.  I was just afraid that my flash would go off, so I didn't take any inside.

 Little man found these all over the front lawn and loved them!  I believe this came from a mock orange tree, but don't quote me on that. 

 This was the original kitchen and cook's living quarters.

 Taking a peek into the slaves' quarters.

 Here we are waiting for our group's turn to tour the inside of the house.  Our homeschool group had to divide into three smaller groups to tour the inside of the house.  We were group #2. 

Can you see my little men standing in front of the steps?  They are hidden in the shadows!

We left Magnolia Grove and headed to Moundville to visit Moundville State Park. According to the website, this was the site of a Native American settlement from around 1000 to 1450AD.

 This is the largest mound on site.

 And we got to climb it!

The view from the top! Notice the little toy like cars below!

Grammar - Okay, remember this post where I hated our new grammar program?  Well, I was all kinds of wrong.  While I waited for Growing With Grammar to arrive in the mail, we kept on trucking with our BJU grammar.  It slowly, but surely grew on me.  I returned GWG unopened.  For right now, I love BJU.  I hope I don't have to eat my words - again.   Little man is loving First Language Lessons.  We are taking it really slow (I think we are on lesson 20), but he is getting it!  It blows my mind!  It seems so simple.  Just basically a conversation between mother and child.  Nothing too intensive.  No beating him over the head - and yet, it was time for him to say the definition of a noun all by himself.  I was prepared to help.  He is only in kindergarten for goodness sake.  But, no help necessary: "A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea."  says my little man.  You go!

Phonics/Reading - The bigger boys are finishing up a book about the first Thanksgiving and are moving on to The Courage of Sarah Noble.  We'll see how this goes.  My boys are all boy and they don't really enjoy reading many books with a girl as the main character.  I'll let you know if we can make it through, so if we have to ditch it and find something else.  Little man is just about to start the second of the Abeka 1st grade readers. 

Science - This week in science, we were talking about our digestive system.  My boys love all things gross and so the digestive system is of particular interest to them.  Ugh - boys!  Anyway, we did a little experiment to see how the small intestine absorbs the things that the body needs and sends the rest to the large intestines as waste.  Our liquid concoction had cocoa powder, salt, and water. 

 Um, that is NOT one tsp.  That is one heaping tsp.

  We poured our concotion through our funnel of paper towel.  The paper towel was supposed to act like our small intestine and absorb the cocoa and let the salt water pass through.  It really did work, except we had added a little too much cocoa so some came through our paper towel.  We did it a second time and measured a little more carefully. 

 They were supposed to drink the water that came through the paper towel to see what it tasted like.

 Apparently not very good.  It was super super salty!

 Little man just kept on drinking it like it was nothing.  I think he was just putting on a show!

Don't forget to head over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what everybody else has been up to this week.  Also, let me know any great ideas/websites/products for math facts!