Not Back to School Fun Day

Wednesday the local public schools started so we had our "Not Back to School" Fun Day

We started our day heading to the grocery store to buy doughnuts and juice and then heading to the park for a breakfast picnic and playtime.

After the little kids were worn out we went home and did a small amount of normal school work and played computer games while we waited for it to be time for little E to go down for his nap.

Once he was down for his nap the big kids and I started playing board games.  We LOVE board games in our house.  Our homeschool closet is stocked with lots of games.

D and S enjoyed working together to play Multiplication Twister.  Since D was too twisted up to find the numbers he would solve the multiplication problem and then tell S the answer.  She then searched the board for the number and pointed it out to him.  D got to practice his multiplication tables and S worked on number recognition.  Woot!  Math Game for two.  We also did a little frog hopping from answer to answer on the board.  D multiplying and S just looking for the numbers.

By the time E was up from his nap the big kids were tired of games and both were happy to curl up with a book for a little while and I played cars with the little boys.

After reading for a bit the big kids both wanted to play computer games again so they were happy to be allowed another time on the computers to play.   D is back to enjoying Dreambox and S is still in love with Reading Eggs.  S is going to be upset at the end of the month when our Reading Eggs subscription ends.

After their computer time was over D got to go play in the garage with his new tool set.  He is learning to hammer nails in straight so he can eventually build and paint a few birdhouses for his grandparent's for Christmas.  So he happily sat in the garage for about an hour pounding in nails and measuring how far one nail was from another etc.

Overall it was a fun day and the kids were worn out at the end of the day.  Can't ask for much more!

Weekly Update - Aug 6-10th

It was a slow week around our house.

Monday we did our normal work, but I had to drag D through it kicking and screaming.  It was a tough day and I was happy to take Tuesday off to head to the zoo.

Way too many pictures from the zoo

Actually got all 4 of them to sit together!

E enjoying the sea lions

Taking a break while sitting in the shade watching the giraffes

My family of meerkats

This tiger came over and put it's face right up to the glass in front of each of the kids trying to smell them. 

When did these two grow up! 

Wednesday D again wanted nothing to do with school and was picking on his siblings most of the day... so it was not a good day and I quickly called school off for the day, took away all electronics and told the kids to find someway to amuse themselves the rest of the day.

Thursday we spent the morning playing at the park and then doing schoolwork once Daddy went to work.  That turned around and bit me in the butt.  Kids were tired and cranky, baby E wouldn't take a nap, and R was into EVERYTHING!  By the end of the day, not much school had been done, my house looked like ToyRus exploded inside it and I was exhausted!  Homeschooling is not for the weak!

Today turned out to be our one good day of the week.  D finally sat down with me and we breezed through a lot of work and almost got caught up.  We will still have some science and history to do on Saturday, but there's not much else to do while Daddy is working all weekend so we might as well get caught up on school.

Only 5 more weeks of school before we take a month long break to move back home!  In that time I also need to make some review workbooks for D to do to keep his mind working while I'm busy packing and unpacking. I'm thinking that I am going to make some math fact sheets for him to practice on, a couple of Latin vocab word sheets, wipe off map sheets to keep practicing his states, some grammar review sheets and a bunch of sodoku and logic puzzles.

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Weekly Update - July 30th to August 3rd

This week was a "just get it done" week!

Between grumpy kids, a sleep deprived mommy, and daddy's schedule messing with our normal routine, it was a LONG week.  

Most of this week was spent just quickly getting through lessons and moving on to more fun things like video games and board games.  

We spent many mornings out at the park playing before it got too hot.  The kids had a great time.  I just wish that the moms here were more welcoming to others.  Nothing like having a group of moms stand directly in front of the bench you are sitting on with their backs to you ignoring you for 30 minutes.  I'm (some what) fine with them ignoring me but do they have to stand in front of me so I'm stuck looking between their butts to find my kids on the playground!

A few highlights of the week

S read to me most evenings this week.  Lately she has been reading Mercy Watson books and short stories adapted from the Little House books.  The LH adaptations are too difficult for her, but she was doing really well with the Mercy Watson books and stumbled on only a few words per page.  

S is going to do great at narrations in a year of so when we start them.  We have been taking time every morning to read a few poems or stories from the "What your ____ needs to know" series.  Since she is so used to D being asked questions after I read passages to him that she wanted the same.  She did great at answering basic questions and giving me a complete thought.   Not bad for a not quite 5 year old!

D's whining has reduced greatly now that I do even more writing for him.  I figured it was more important to make school fun for him than to know for certain that he know's a specific set of information.  So many things that I was fighting with him over writing are all things that will be repeated year after year to make sure he has the concepts down that I finally got it through my thick head that he doesn't need to it now.  Eventually he will get out of his pencil phobic ways and start writing more on his own.

D is continuing to do great with Latin.  He needs quite a few sessions of reviewing the new words, but we are on lesson 4 this week and he has the 15 words from 1-3 down.  He can go Latin to English or English to Latin without problems.

Little E is almost done cutting his 4 canine teeth (they all came in on two days!) He's been pretty good but you can tell that his mouth has been bothering him this week.

Wild man R's big accomplishment for the week was learning how to go down the firepole at the playground all by himself.  I think he did it 25 times in a row after he figured it out.  He was worn out that day!  Next week I'm hoping to get out some of my Letter of the Week activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler and start working on them with R.  He needs something special to do with mommy.

Other big Highlight of our week was realizing that we are under 60 days until we leave New Mexico and head for our normal home in Alabama!  We are all happy to be getting ready to go home.  That means that we have 6 more weeks of school before we get a 3 week break to get moved and settled back in our AL house. 

This post was linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers