Week Five, August 24, 2012

Another week down!

In my life this week:

Cooking!  I'm preparing a bunch of make ahead freezer meals.

I'm also back at the gym thing.  I've gained a whopping 20 pounds since we started homeschooling 2 years ago.  Yucko!  And to top it off, Hubs has decided that he needs to lose weight.  This is true, but my man must be larger than me. :)  I miss running, so I will try my best to get back.  I'm using www.myfitnesspal.com to help me track and count calories in/out.  Try it out, we can be friends and motivate each other through the website!

Places we're going and people we're seeing:



Let's see:

Saturday - Bowling Lesson, Swimming at Gramom's & Pop's, Grocery

 



practicing their snorkeling



Sunday - Church (nothing more, nothing less)

Monday - Tae Kwon Do

Tuesday - a "Not Back To School Party" with friends at Jump Zone!
Our little homeschool group packed out the place with over 100 kids - Wow!  Great fun for them!

 Followed by lunch with Grandparents.

Spunk's Flat Stanley rode down the slide for a pic.


 Wednesday - Co-op, which we think is awesome!  Then we hit the library.

 



Spunk reading in the children's section at the library.

Thursday - An impromptu playdate with friends for pizza, cookies, and great conversation.
and the neverending Tae Kwon Do & Baseball practice

Friday - hopefully nowhere!!



And I'm going to add in piano and art class next month?  Crazy Momma here!

What I'm cooking:

Besides the freezer meals, see my meal plan of the week here

also baking chocolate chip cookies and bread.  Is there anything that warms the heart more than homemade bread? I think not, people.

 

We made these cute taco salad bowls out of tortillas baked on the bottom side of a muffin tin.

 

 

 

In our homeschool this week:

Thoughtful:

Language - Thoughtful is learning to how to read and access a telephone book.  I have mixed thoughts on this.  Is his generation ever going to need such a tool?  I haven't used a phone book in a decade.  Then again, it is part of his curriculum, and there must be a reason for this lesson.
 

Math - He's begun multiplication with X's 2.  He loves it and wants to move faster!  We'll see how it goes as we progress.  I'm not getting too excited yet.
 

Reading - FINALLY finishing the longest chapter book ever!  He has struggled his way through a Berenstain Bears "Big Chapter" book, and it truly was 13 long chapters.  It has taken over three weeks for Thoughtful to finish this one.  Lots of big words, lots of slang conversation, and just lots of difficulty.  But he kept pushing through, and its finished!  Fun reading now.

 

 

Spunk:

Phonics:  Its quite boring with him.  He has a lot of decoding assignments, which he doesn't need. 

I'm thinking of jumping forward with some tougher blends/sounds to challenge him a bit more.  He's reading like a champ.  He'll at least try to read anything he can get his hands on, and most times he gets it. 

Language - Complete sentences - beginning with capital, ending with punctuation.

Math - adding +1, time, patterns, introduced to word problems with adding - DISLIKE!

Understanding when to use KE or CK at the end of a word.

 

 

Group:

Bible - We are learning the Books of the Bible, and we're always moving through our devotions.

History and Science are very close together right now, both based around Creation.  We've finished our Creation lapbooks this week.  In Science we learned all of our continents and oceans.

Thoughtful's labeled map.

They also learned that God separated the dry land from the seas on the third day of creation.  Yep, that would include continents and oceans.

In our "spare time:"

yeah right.

No really, children do play.  They've been shooting bows a lot lately.  Hubs is getting ready for hunting season, and you know the old saying "Monkey see, monkey do..."

 

If we ever run across a legless deer in the woods, he's goin' down.

 

 And as we endure our rainy season here in the Sunshine State, we have a lot of runoff water.  We also have many different types of soil around our property, including an area with clay near the surface.  The boys have discovered that clay, and they've been working hard to harvest it for later modeling.

 

I love to see these little boy hands in the raw ground.

 



I'm reading:

Sunday School material.  I co-teach with a great school teacher, but neither of us are very experienced in the first grade Sunday School classroom.  Last week, we discovered that we really should be better prepared since the crazies out-number us.

Thoughts/Questions I have:

I'd really like to discover what is the appropriate age to learn keyboarding and computer skills.  Thoughtful has dabbled a bit in typing, until we were left without a desktop machine.  Can he learn on a laptop?  Should we wait?

Also, I'm seriously considering buying the kids tablets for Christmas or birthdays this year.  Why would I do such a silly thing?  They keep stealing my laptop!  Also, I keep reading about a ton of great apps that YOU are using to supplement learning.  It would be cheaper than a handheld gaming system as I'd otherwise have to purchase all of those games.  But I want to hold onto their ambitious imaginative play for as long as possible.  I'm afraid too much technology will squash that.  I'm so unsure on this one!

I'm praying for:

Linda, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and started chemotherapy this week.
 Her daughter and son-in-law are some of our closest friends.

A final thought:

I'm also praying for the homeschooling Mommas that need encouragement. 

These thoughts follow a conversation I had with a friend this week,
about our shortfalls in motherhood. 

We try so hard to balance all parts of our lives: our husbands, households, children, souls, friendships, service duties, and even jobs.  We try to do it all with a smile, and when we happen to slip with a frown or frustration, we feel we've failed.  Well, you, my friends, haven't failed.  Do not let the enemy get in your heads.  Sure, life would be easier if you sent your children to school, but would it be as memorable?  Would it be a life lived to the fullest?  Would you be following what you know in your hearts to be right and good for your families? 

So, close the books if you need to, and go outside.  Learn to love the small moments with your children.  They are passing by ever so quickly, never to return.  Hold close to the Lord, staying in His Word and prayer.  And know that you're not alone in the trials of this season of your lives.  I am praying for each of you out there! 

All (have sinned and) fall short of the glory of God.  Romans 3:23

If we got it right everyday with every task, then He would be finished molding us, and we wouldn't fall short, right?  We are a work-in-progress!


What about you?  How did this week go?  What little moments can you savor?
 I look forward to reading about it!

This week, I'm linking up to The Homeschool Mother's Journal at http://www.ihomeschoolnetwork.com
and
Weekly Wrapup at
http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com