Monday, January 30, 2012

What we are up to this week.....





Here's the plan....we'll see how it works out.

Math---The boys will be working on Teaching Textbooks.  Joey is almost finished, and Brayden is a bit behind him.  He's behind due to attention span issues.  Lydia will continue with her Math U See Primer...She's only had 7 lessons left before moving up a math level.  
State Geography--Georgia
World Travelers--Ethiopia
Language Arts--Joey is continuing work with Pronouns this week.  And they will all be working with Reading Eggs or Reading Eggspress.
Health--This is a bit off topic.  Lydia was going to look at different herbs that heal and can be used for medicine, because of Josefina.  In book 4, she thinks of becoming a corandera.  So I decided to turn it into a Health lesson and we are all going to discuss some herbs and their benefits.
Art--two painting projects for Ethiopia and hopefully for Art lesson #9.  But we'll wait and see.
All About Reading---Lydia will be using this week.
Music--Guitar lessons and Kinderbach.  Lydia has been asking about violin lessons.  We'll wait and see.
Handwriting--Copywork of Strange Facts and Handwriting without Teats (Lydia).
Science--We'll be catching back up on Genes...and I'm not talking laundry!

That the plan for the week....we'll share what we get finished.

Everyone have a wonderful week!!!

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Our Weekly Triumphs and Accomplishments

We had one of those weeks.  We fell behind in "structured" school, and just went with alot of unschooling this week.

So this is a bit of what we did.

We went sledding...



 Had hot chocolate...
 And then learned about Polymer by using these cool little beads.  And yes...Brayden even participated.  He was enthralled with these beads and even played with them, adding water every time the water was absorbed.  The cool thing I learned, was that polymer was originally invented for farmers to keep their crops watered during times of drought.  Now....knowing this...definitely thinking organic is best.  What is that polymer leaking into the food if it's used???  Of course, it's all the kids bottoms in their diapers also.  No wonder kids get diaper rash.
 First they sorted the beads
 Added water the first round.
 Second round
 They just keep getting bigger....they outgrew the little tray.
 Some colors were bigger than others.
 I had forgotten about this coin sorter.  I found it when cleaning the shelves.  Lydia and Caty played with this to try and remember their coin values.
 We made a Cherry Pie for National Pie Day.



 And read this fun story and followed it through the US with our map.  Brayden caught me off guard by not even sitting by the map and telling me where the States were located.  Thanks to BIG IQ Kids Geography program!!
 I let them make pizza bagels for lunch one day.  They each made their own.

 And then we had two bagels that I forgot to wrap up tight enough....so what to do with hard bagels....make bird feeders!!!


 We went on a field trip to the Art Museum to learn about Animals in Art.  This piece, made out of wood, was a throne for a king in Africa.
 The kids listening to the docent and playing "I-Spy" to find all the animals in this piece.
 My favorite piece....a monkey mosaic.
 Then they played in the Family Center for a bit.  Joey and Lydia were amazed by the typewriters.


Lydia and I are trying to walk more during the week.  It was nice and we took a quick walk to the post office.  But it equals a mile...lol.  Getting a little workout in too.  It is so wet here in January (not frozen) that the sidewalks were almost all under water.  We had to walk in the State Route half our trip to downtown.  
 The girls had American Girl Club.  We are reading Josefina right now.  The girls made shawls for their dolls.


 And they decorated picture frames to hold special pictures like Josefina's family did.


 The girls also had a field trip to a Grocery Co-op. They taught us about healthy food choices.  And we found some unique foods, including Tuff Flour for our Ethiopian meal!!


 Caty didn't like the all-natural chocolate...and then she got bored.  She found dino puppets to play with during the tour.
 We made Chocolate Cake for National Chocolate Day.

 And this was Lydia and Daddy getting ready to leave for the Daddy and Me Dance on Friday.

It was a busy and fun learning week....just very unstructured.  Oh well...there's always next!


Saturday, January 28, 2012

Sledding fun!!!













 And then we came home and had Hot Chocolate!!!  It wasn't a mix either...we found the recipe in our Vintage Remedies book we are using for Health.  We created our own "mix" that was not full of processed junk!!!