Fall Ball

Indulge me. : ) Saturday was our first day of fall soccer and in honor of the occasion I brought the big camera to B’s first game.

Love the look on her face in this one…

A little excessive use of our hands here. Oops.

And goal!

Weekly Wrap-up // Labor Day Week in Which All our Activities Started

A super full week as we added in the rest of our weekly activities that we are committing to for this fall!

On the scholastic front:

Math: Each girl got in three lessons this week. N1 is in the intro / review lessons for Saxon 3; N2 started learning how to tell time this week as well as new addition (+2) facts); B and I continued working with manipulatives and learning about patterns. Math went fairly well without too many wrinkles this week for which I was thankful. Part of me wants to skip ahead to some new material in N1’s math work because we are doing quite a bit of review, however, she has had some very successful timed tests this week which I think is making this slower progress more worthwhile. I’m seeing her confidence grow and that has been much needed in this area!

Language Arts:

N1: started Writing with Ease Level 3; completed lessons 78-79 in First Language Lessons; regular process in her Explode the Code and handwriting workbooks. She also finished Freddy the Detective and completed one of these book report sheets for me.

N2: finished Explode the Code 2 book and will be starting book 2 1/2 next week. Completed week 3 in Writing with Ease, lessons 7-8 in First Language Lessons (level 1), and her regular handwriting worksheets.

B: We have slowed waaaaaay down in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Waaaaaay down. She was getting so frustrated. We have backed off to a 1/2 lesson per day and will stay at that pace for a while I think. We are reading lots and lots of picture books together and talking about them. She is doing one handwriting worksheet a day and working on her fine motor skills. While we are backing off on her Lang Arts materials to move at her pace, I’ve been thankful to see her excited about doing math each day! She asks to do that first most days!

Social Studies/History: We listened to Story of the World, chapter 2, on the audio version and talked about the people that lived in/near the Fertile Crescent. This coincides nicely with our geography memory work for Classical Conversations this week – we learned where the Mediterranean Sea, Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and Tigris River, and Sumer were located.

Science: Our memory work for CC was the classification of living things which we have been learning about the last two weeks through lapbooking.

New activities:

Awana: Our Awana program started this week. N1 is in Trek (grades 3-6), N2 and B are in Sparks (K-2nd), and the boy began Puggles (ages 18mos – 3). As you can see, he was not at all excited about going. : )

We had our first day of Classical Conversations and I absolutely loved it. We have been practicing our memory work all week (I’m learning right along with the girls). This is from my class (faces hidden to protect the innocent) and B is helping a classmate hold her “all about me” poster for our first week’s presentation.

 

Right now we are doing a fine arts rotation for the next six weeks. We talked about the five basic shapes (dots, circles, lines, curves, and angles) that are found in most paintings and drawings and then used one of Ed Emberly’s fabulous drawing books to practice.

 

Bible: The girls and I are reading a chapter from Matthew most mornings. As of today, we started our CBS Bible study and will be working through 1 & 2 Kings and some of the minor prophets this year. The N’s (and myself) have lessons to prepare each week so I’m hoping to roll this in to part of our school day.

To sum up: our days are definitely full. I don’t think they are too full, but adding a third student this year + the busy boy has made our day longer. Right now we are starting each day around 9 a.m. (a few days this week it’s been between 9:30 – 10a.m. because of some phone calls and church work I needed to tackle) and we are wrapping up between 3 – 3:30 in the afternoons. In spite of the longer days, I’ve been pleased that the girls are hanging in there with me throughout the day to get their work done. I really think it helps that they rotate time with the boy and get small breaks in the morning. I’m not saying I don’t see room for improvement, of course, but for our official week three, I’ll take it.

Happy Friday! We have one girl’s first soccer game on Saturday and we’re hoping that it doesn’t get rained out; otherwise, we’ve got a weekend of tidying up the house and getting ready for next week in store. About like normal. : )

Linking up with Kris @ Weekly Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Labor Day Daybook

Some of this was done on Monday, some of this on Tuesday, and now Wednesday. Hopefully it still flows. : )

Outside my window...grey weather. We’re supposed to get more rain today and I will happily take a cozy, grey day inside with everyone home. (This was Monday).

I am thinking...that I am pooped. : ) We had our first full day of Classical Conversations today (Tuesday) and, I admit, we came home (after a first day celebratory Sonic stop) and crashed.

I am thankful...for full cupboards and a husband who went grocery shopping with me and the munchkins on Saturday. It always goes so much smoother in the store when he’s with us. Our schedules haven’t lined up in many a Saturday to do this errand together so I was glad it worked this weekend!

In the kitchen...lots of yumminess and fresh veggies in the fridge after last week’s eating out and snacking while traveling. I was so ready for salad! A few things that have been on the menu of late or will be this week:

• on Saturday night I made this simple carbonara pasta and it was a hit with almost everyone (hello, it has BACON) in it. I made it with ziti noodles instead of slippery spaghetti so it was easier for little ones to fork.
• tonight I’m making this oven-fried chicken. I made it two weeks ago and the plate was licked clean … and I had made extra to have for lunches!
• contemplating adding homemade pizza back in the menu again. I’ve been lazy and T has been picking up pizza most Friday nights, but I would love to figure out a crust we all LOVE and make it at home and save money. Still searching for the perfect crust.

I am wearing...comfy clothes after a long skirt from CC this morning.

I am creating...um. Does just printing the pictures for Project Life count? I have about four weeks in my current album that I need to journal and, I think, a couple in the last album to catch up. I have written that on my to-do list for this week so we shall see if I actually get to it.

I am going...to be drinking coffee and water this week. Edited to add: with the exception of the Diet Coke that I got at Sonic today. Other than that, it’s been just coffee and water. : )

I am reading...slowly through the Pioneer Woman’s new cookbook (The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier)that I finally got from the library. Delicious. I can’t wait to copy a few recipes down to try and anticipate putting this book on my Christmas list. I finished 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker last week while we were out of town and it was world-rocking. I’m not ready to put my thoughts into print yet, but I know I need to start journaling some of it while it’s fresh. I need to pick up a new book to read not sure what to grab next. I’ve assigned the girls each a new chapter book: N1 is reading Freddy The Detective; N2 is reading Betsy-Tacy. (We’ve enjoyed that as a read-aloud, but she’s reading it on her own this go-round.)

I am looking forward to...seeing our small group tonight. We missed last week with travel.

I am learning…lessons in my weakness and His strength.

Around the house...things aren’t in terrible shape – especially since we have our small group coming over in a bit. : ) That inspires a bit of picking up. It helped that we did the bulk of it last night. And then we were out of the house for most of today. : )

I am pondering...whether we have seen the demise of our coffee pot. It seems to have sprung a leak which is most unfortunate.

A favorite quote for today...one I’m pondering:

Learn to do good;
seek justice,
reprove the ruthless;
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:17

One of my favorite things...catching up with a friend. Summer has been too busy and I’m in need to catch-up time with a few folks.

A few plans for the rest of the week…Wednesday and Thursday will be normal low-key school days although we do have Awana starting tomorrow night. On Friday, our Bible study starts back up as well. And we have a birthday party to try to attend and B’s first soccer game. I guess it’s safe to say that fall activities are officially here. On the home front, I have church directories that need to be printed. It’s not one of my favorite tasks, but it’s very fun to see them all stacked up when they are completed and bound.

A peek into my day...

My CC directory slipped me a piece of chocolate while I was tutoring today and this was the message inside. Very appropriate, I felt. : )

Happy Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday!

Weekly Wrap-up // The In and Out of Town Week

This week was light on formal schoolwork but heavy on fun for all of us! A last summer fling before the real and steady nose-to-the-grindstone begins next week. Please pardon the insane amount of pictures for this post. I couldn’t leave any of them out so if you are not a grandma or relation, please feel free to skim. : )

Monday: We had a normal day of school on Monday (so normal that I’ll leave out the nuts-and-bolts of what we checked off our lists this time).

Tuesday: We visited our Classical Conversations tutorial for orientation and meet-and-greet day! It was a fun and busy time there as the girls met their tutors and I met the class that I will be working with this coming year. I have a little group of abecedarians (5 and young 6’s, kindergarten age) and it looks like B will be in my group!

After CC, we snuck in a quick orthodontist check for N1 and she got her front four braces on today. She’s been a little sore, but otherwise a trooper about the whole thing. She thinks they are pretty cool (when they aren’t impeding with her eating) and I think they make her look older. : )

After N1’s appointment, we headed home to load up with the (and, a-hem, finish packing) and hit the road for a three-day trip to Chattanooga! T had a work meeting so the kids and I tagged along. Chattanooga is a beautiful, visitor friendly city and we enjoyed our time there!

Photo taken from the pedestrian walking bridge overlooking the Tennessee River. The building with the pointed roof on the left is the Tennessee Aquarium.

Wednesday: We hit up the Children’s Discovery Museum. This year the boy was in heaven as we wandered and played and explored. He and B (and N2 to some extent) are just the right target ages for this museum and enjoyed exploring the music, art and doctor areas. N1 was in heaven in their large art center. We easily spent three hours there before they were ready to move on and find some lunch.

 

Thursday: We saved our favorite stop for day two – the Tennessee Aquarium! The aquarium is made up of two large buildings – one that houses fresh water animals and one that is for oceanic life. We spent the morning viewing the fresh water fish. I am amazed by God’s creativity in the creatures that He created that live in the water, rarely visible to the normal, everyday eye!

Some of our favorites: (1) seahorses; (2) a large (LARGE) fresh water fish; (3) Russian sturgeon (these are some of the fish that give us caviar); (4) the aquarium has a butterfly habitat and we spotted this giant butterfly/moth that was just beautiful. It was probably the size of one of the girls’ hands! (5) Shark! (6) Large crab – tiny children.

This pic below isn’t a great pic, but I like it for a couple of reasons. One, the two shadows at the bottom are B and the boy and she’s telling him about the fish. (He has slept through the dive show we watched which was a good thing – the divers in the tanks freaked him out with their masks and gear). Two, this picture shows the immense size of the tank in the oceanic building. This tank was approximately 36 feet deep in the deepest section, 100 feet long, and 50 feet wide. An immense tank!

A stop in the shark cage is always fun. : )

You will have to indulge me if I share several photos of the same animal – jellyfish are my favorite! I am just in awe of their translucent bodies and filmy, wispy “tails”. They amaze me at how delicate they are.

 

We found time for some reading while hanging in the hotel room. (N2 finished her first big chapter book – Ramona the Pest soon after we got home from this trip!)

Friday: Did you know that there is a Towing Museum? There is and it’s in Chattanooga where the tow truck was invented in the early 1900’s. We have a boy that is very into cars right now, so we made a stop here on Friday while T was on a break from his meeting. You can see some of the tow trucks below – I was surprised by the huge range in size of the different models!

The one on the below left is the tire of a WW2 tow truck used by General Patton on the shores of Normandy. Look at how big the tires are! I loved the yellow tow truck on the below right as well – check out the wood paneling on the 1935 Ford!

This is the biggest tow truck ever built, and there were only four ever made. This big daddy can pull up to 70 tons. It was HUGE!

After depositing T back at his meeting for the wrap-up, we went for a long walk over the pedestrian bridge in Chattanooga. Needed to get some energy out before drive home later that evening. : )

At the end of the bridge, once you get over the Tennessee River is Coolidge Park with a very invited splash park. After a quick dig through the luggage to make sure we had enough dry clothes left to get us home, the kids went splashing for a big as a last romp during our time in Chattanooga.

And with that, we said good-bye to Chattanooga. Now it’s back home and back to our normal routine. While most will take a small break on Monday for Labor Day, we are going to hit the books to prepare for our first full day of CC on Tuesday. All our weekly activities – CC, Awana, and our Friday Bible study – start up this week so there will be no lack of things to report in our next weekly wrap-up!