All The Happenings This Week!

Organizing:

Books were the target this week (and last) of my organization frenzy. This small stack is just a drop in the bucket- after 27 years, we have too many books!! Figuring out which ones to keep, which ones to gift to grandchildren, which ones are in such bad shape they need to recycled, and which ones to donate, was a process.

Then there is the distraction of coming across some of my daughter's favorite childhood books...

To finally having our shelves are organized- we have a few shelves in our attic that we can rotate books from.


Speaking of Books:


What's Cooking:
Stole this yummy idea after reading Jen's post last week.

Chores: 
Dogs are so much nicer to be around when they are clean!

On the Road:

We zipped over to Monterey for one last aquarium visit before our passes expired.

Photo Credit: James (7yo)- he was fascinated with the "ball" that the
anchovies (I think that is what type of fish it is) were making.

 This ray was very friendly- there was one shot that had
all the boys petting it, but sadly it did not turn out!

Erin (17yo), usually a rare sight on this blog as she is always busy, joined us for our fun
day out. James pooped out, so she gave him a lift for a few minutes.


What's New:

We started using Time4Learning today. I plan to give an "official" report after we get a better handle on it, but it was interesting exploring something new. James (7yo) had a great time. I signed him up as a 1st grader. He hovers between 1st and 3rd in his ability when choosing books, so I thought beginning on the low end would be a good idea. He really enjoyed using it. I was impressed with the lesson presentation, the prompts when struggling with a concept, and the lesson reinforcement. I am still figuring out the upper grades with my two older boys. I had hoped their lessons would be similar to James' in presentation, but the only option for audio (that I have figured out so far) is text to speech mode. I don't want to say too much as we have just scratched the surface. I will post next week when we have a better handle on things.

Lesson Planning:

We began Snowflake Bentley this week!! (that will have to be separate post) We are having a great time, but it will be a two week study. This week was so unseasonably warm that we took a whole afternoon off to go the park to ride bikes and play football at the park in addition to our all ready busy week. On Monday the weather pattern shifts, so we figured we should enjoy it while we can.

Out of the House:

This week was our "Hands On Sports" commitment. Erin (17yo) and Paul (12yo) coach 6-10 year old homeschool children in basic sports/coordination skills. Marky (10yo) requested to "help coach" this week. He was assigned to stay with the 6 and 7 year old group to help out and he did a great job! He took so much pride in his work that every time he sees someone the first words out of his mouth are "guess what I did this week?!" and he goes on to tell them all about it. One of the fun activity stations that they did this week was "playground games". They played "Follow the Leader", "Mother May I", "Duck, Duck, Goose", and the ever famous "roll down the hill and pile on each other". It was pretty cute.

Swim Lessons! I have found somewhere to do swim lessons. We live so near the beach and, really, my boys' confidence in the ocean by far outstrips their abilities- as a self- preservation (I get so nervous!!) move, I have signed them up for swim lessons. My boys have a private teacher for the 3 of them, so the focus right now is water survival. I have high hopes for a more relaxing summer while I watch my boys swim and boogie board.

Lego Robotics Class- Still the highlight of the week.

Just for Fun (or PE):
Kids playing football on co op day.


We need to stay home more!!

Hope you all had a great week.

I plan to link up to Forever, For Always, No Matter What, and to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. You can see how other homeschoolers' weeks worked out and join in if you want to!!

Comments

  1. ShannonFebruary 11, 2011 at 10:17 PM

    What a full week!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFebruary 12, 2011 at 4:23 AM

    I love your bookshelves! Thanks for trying to link up, not sure why it's not working. You had another fun week. Be glad that you can get outside!! I look forward to hearing more about Snowflake Bentley, we really like the book too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In EverythingFebruary 12, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    I love the variety of activities;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownFebruary 12, 2011 at 2:55 PM

    I LOVE your bookshelves! We never seem to have enough of them around here...even after donating and giving away! Lotsa fun stuff!

    Jessy

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our Morning Time

Image
Look at me writing 2 posts so close together!! So... I have loved listening to the podcasts on morning time called "Your Morning Basket". I have listened to all of them. Very inspiring! They are all worthwhile to listen to, but I have to tell you that episode #2 with Andrew Pudewa is a game changer (in the homeschool sense). We have had our own variations on morning time in our house. When my girls were younger (they are now 31, 30, 28 and 22 years old), we had "seat work time" and "couch time". I'd say that couch time was our version of what is now being called morning time. For the most part, we read historical fiction, discussed history (I would either read from or discuss from a text), learned a little geography, read the bible, had prayer time, and had some pretty fun discussions. There was a transition when my now 28 year old became sort of a teachers helper for her younger sister. I remember working on art appreciation with her at the h...
Read more

Week in Review: February 1-5 2016

Image
Lots of baby care around here as the boys' big sister (our second daughter, Jessica) was having her fifth baby. It was a week full of sword fighting, cuddles, disney movies, books, and coloring. It's also been a week full of colds. The 2 year old twins had a cold, which I assume James caught from them (although every one in the world seems to have it, so not necessarily). The problem is that no matter how many times I caution the boys, who can resist cuddling with a sweet little toddler who does not feel well? I guess germs are meant to be shared. In the way of school, we have been in "keep up" mode. Paul's strongest focus is on his Dave Ramsey finance class (which I highly recommend), his Spanish class, and his economics course. http://www.daveramsey.com/store/search.ep?keyWords=homeschool http://www.livinglanguage.com/languagelab/spanish  (I cannot recommend this highly enough. The books and cds make it easy to open and go. Additionally, the...
Read more

Din-spiration Part 6

Image
This is sort of a lighthearted post, but I am going to start by saying that all those in Paris and the World are in my prayers. There are never words when something so unspeakable happens. As it has been pointed out, it happens far more often that we usually hear about in places that are more obscure to most of us. I'm going to continue with this planned post as most of us still have "normal life" to attend to and families to feed amidst this very stressful backdrop. To keep myself accountable, I was going to keep up posting about my crusade to eat at home. I have failed the last few weeks, but the resolve to eat at home has not! The great thing is that on the days when resolve wanes in me, my husband picks it up. He is often the one to encourage me that he can stop by and pick up an ingredient I forgot, or to step in and create a dish himself. He chose make us a Lasagna last week- for me, that is a more involved dinner than I will take on a week day. Rather than...
Read more