I've been such a slacker, time to get back on the blog.

It's been a long time since I posted here on the blog.  This past school year has been one of many ups and downs.  We had a lot of good times and a lot of frustrating times.  We finally just had to call it a year and be done.  We will be doing some summer schooling but nothing too intense.  

Lucas will continue with math boot camp to nail down those addition and subtraction operations.  

Everett will continue with spelling and will be doing a fractions and decimals boot camp for math.

Annika will continue with her Barton Reading and Spelling lessons as well as doing a multiplication and division math boot camp.  

Annika is also undergoing a lot of evaluations to make sure we know of any other underlying learning issues she has.  She is currently in therapy for some more speech issues and some auditory processing problems.   Barton has been a huge game changer for her in the area of language arts, but Matt and I feel we have to get her evaluated for any learning problems that could be on the table so we're better equipped to guide her through her education.  

All of our math boot camps will be done using the Math U See curriculum.  So far the kids are really enjoying it and we've already had a few "A-ha" moments. 

I hope you all have a fabulous summer. 

It's almost time to start up again

It's almost time to start back into the school routine, so I spent a little time today updating the shelves.  I moved out somethings we'd finished and moved in a few things we'll now need.  I also took some new pictures while the place is still somewhat clean.  

Weekly Report -- December 10-14

I know it's been a couple weeks since I did a report, but we had some sort of nasty cold come through the house the first week of December, so we all just hunkered down to wait it out.  We got back to it on the 10th to wrap up the loose ends of lessons we wanted to finish before our winter break.  Everett completed level 3 of his spelling program. Woohoo, on to level 4.  Annika has completed penmanship and now we can get into actually learning to write not just copy things.  They all did math and Lucas finished some lessons in his phonics program.  He's doing great.  The rest of the report is going to be a mostly pictures of the things we did in other subjects.

Everett and Annika learned about the first 12 Presidents.  They worked on their timeline and lapbook project while watching parts of the History Channel show The Presidents.

I set up our first pH experiment after making our gloriously stinky cabbage indicator

Nice Color Changes!
Here's what the indicator looked like after adding things.
In order (l-r) they are:
plain indicator, vinegar, ammonia, lemon juice, water, baking soda, dish soap, sprite, and salt.

Recording the Results

Then we used some homemade litmus paper to test the pH of various citrus fruits.

Then they glued the litmus to their recording pages.

We did a few other experiments, but nothing all that was worth taking pictures of.  We're now officially finished with Chemistry. I think for the rest of the year we'll dabble in Physics.  Everett celebrated the end of the term by going to see The Hobbit with his best friend and Annika made her first batch of cupcakes all on her own.  Lucas spent the night up in his room playing on his iPad.

They were YUMMY!

I think next week we'll just work on cleaning the house, making cookies and getting ready for Solstice.
I hope you all have a fabulous holiday season, no matter what holiday you choose to celebrate.