Halloween 2008 Costumes are finished!

Hi all,

After waiting 9.5 years my kids have finally decided that they wanted costumes not readily available at the Disney Store. After a afternoon of shopping for fabrics and a basic pattern and 3 days of cutting and sewing, they are finished!!

They all wanted to be Pokemon characters. Everett picked Charmander, Annika picked Squirtle and Lucas picked Pikachu. Here are the pictures of the finished suits. Luckily they all turned out a bit big so we'll be able to use them again another year.

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!

Week 6 Review -- September 15-30

Hi all,

I know it's been awhile since I've written an update.  We spent September 8-10th preparing for our drive to Wisconsin.  We drove to my parents house on the 11th and 12th and on the 14th had a baby shower for my cousin who is expecting her first child.  It was a wonderful trip and baby shower.  We have been at my parents since then and will start the return trip home on Oct 8th. 

We have spent the last couple of weeks taking field trips and working on some school work.

Here's some pictures of our latest field trip to The Cave of the Mounds in Wisconsin.

Here is what we did as far as school work.

Everett:

Language arts: He continued on to grade 4 of Growing with Grammar.  Completing 4 lessons on subjects and predicates.  He also complete another week in Writing with Ease year 1 which he's really enjoying.  He's even writing his own narrations now which is a big step for him.  We're taking a break from Spelling power and worked a bit in All About Spelling.

Math: He completed lessons 16-20 in Saxon math 5 which covered numbers written in expanded form, reading scales, reading clocks and rounding to the nearest ten and to the nearest dollar.

Geography: He worked on learning to read latitude and longitude and in locating places on a map using coordinates.

Annika:

Language arts:  She continuing to enjoy her Growing with Grammar lessons and completed lessons 16-18, which included learning about Statements and continued learning the difference between a sentence and a fragment.

Math: We took a break from Saxon since we're on vacation and she's been using Evan Moors Daily Math and Skill Sharpeners.  She's really liking them so we'll most likely keep using them along with Saxon when we get home.

Geography: She worked on reading a map key this week and enjoyed being able to add her own symbol to the key on the map they gave her.

Both Kids:

History:  I read the Barnes and Noble Children's classic The Man in the Iron Mask to them this week.  They really enjoyed the story but we're looking forward to wrapping up France and moving on.

Science: We completed the bacteria experiments in week 6 of NOEO Biology 1.  Luckily with 3 adults, 3 kids, 4 dogs and a cat living in my parents house we had no problem finding things to test.   The kids enjoyed their first experiment and we're anxious to start on the animal kingdom when we get home.

I also received my copy of Artistic Pursuits for grades K-3 book 1 and it looks just like what we've been wanting for art.  We will start this after we get back home since we've been so busy here that we haven't had time to start it.

Hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy the review.

Week 5 Review -- Sept. 1-Sept 6

Another week down and we're still having fun! This week was a week to wrap up any loose ends from other weeks as well as doing all the usual work.  We leave on Thursday the 11th for a trip back to the midwest to visit family.  We already have our books packed and ready to go.  Yes we will still be schooling when we're back in Wisconsin.  So we'll actually skip a week while we clean the house, pack the van and drive on up. Then we'll start up again on Sept. 15th.

Here's a run down of what we did this week.

Everett:

Language arts: 

We wrapped up the few things on verb tense we wanted to cover in Growing with Grammar grade 3.  Next we'll move on to Growing with Grammar Grade 4.  He's excited about this, he really enjoys this program.  For penmanship we ditched A reason for handwriting.  It's a great program but we're not a religious family so copying bible passages just wasn't our cup of tea.  I searched online and found Happy Scribe copybooks.  Everett chose to work on the Planets book this time around.  Each book has a months worth of penmanship practice if done 5 days a week.  We'll only do 4 pages from the book and then on the 5th day of each week they'll be able choose 2 of their favorite sentences from the past 4 days and write them in their best handwriting on a special border sheet I've made up using my new toy, Stationary Studio from Fablevision.  Writing with Ease is still going well.  Everett actually wrote out his own narrations this week which was a big step for him.  Spelling Power is still going well.  We will occasionally take a break and use All About Spelling if he needs it since I already have the program.

Math:  He's continuing with Saxon 5/4 and still loves it.  He's been doing very well working independently on the lessons which has really taken a heap off my plate.

:

Language Arts: Anna is continuing to do well with Growing with Grammar.  She's been working on fragment vs. complete sentence and word order this week.  I'm amazed at how much she's retaining even though she's not a strong reader yet.  She's working steadily through Headsprout phonics and is doing very well.  We need to work more on reading of real books though to help cement what Headsprout is covering.  That was really more of me dropping the ball on that, so I'll be focusing more on that from now on.  She's doing pretty well with Writing with Ease.  Narration is a bit difficult for her, but she's getting there.  Each week things get a bit better.

She's really enjoying the switch to Happy Scribe for penmanship and has decided to work through the cats book first.  She has fantastic penmanship.  Matt even thought her paper was Everett's the other day because it was so neatly written.

Math:  We've been working on our +1 and -1 facts this week with Saxon 1.  We also covered 1 cup liquid measure which was a fun lesson.  

:

History: This week I spent some time revamping history.  We will still use History Odyssey but will drop it for the time periods covered by the Time Travelers cds from Homeschool in the Woods.  I recently discovered these project cds and they look like a ton of fun.  This week we started covering France and learned about Louis XIV.  We finished the week with a Sun King mask project.  The kids really enjoyed this.  I wasn't sure about the project mess but it went really well.  I think they just absorb more when there is a fun project involved.

Science: For science we finished our weather lapbooks and are continuing with Noeo Biology 1.  They love this program and were thrilled that we're moving on to the animal kingdom.  Although this week covered Louis Pasteur and his discovery of microbes.  They have enjoyed the book on Pasteur and are very much looking forward to week 6 when we get to do some experiments on bacteria.

Lucas chose to just play with his trains this week. 

We still haven't started Latin other than to listen to the Song School latin cd for the 1st weeks songs.  I really need to focus more on this, but that will have to wait until after we return from Wisconsin.   While we're there I hope to get quite a few field trips in.  They have an awesome museum and zoo where my parents live and my Aunt and I will be taking the kids to The Cave of the Mounds for a fun "underground" field trip.

Hope you all had a great week.