Friday, January 30, 2015

Week 35 - Tea, a tea party and Winter Storm Juno



We had a long drive from Dallas, Texas to Hartford, Connecticut.  But we survived it.  Lots of stops to rest the legs.

Here is Caty's state map with the magnets we collected in Texas.

Brayden was so excited to be able to eat from the container before we left.
One stop in Memphis at a rest area.




On Sunday, we traveled into Boston to do a small amount of exploring.  This was a first time for the kids and I.

Joe remembered that this is where the Wahlburgers restaurant was.  I am a reality TV Junkie. I love watching the Wahlburgers.  So we went there for Lunch.

 They all gave the food thumbs up!
 Then we visited the Boston Tea Party Ships.  And I tried to have my own tea party.

On our way back from Boston to Hartford we stopped to get food for the hotel room.  A Blizzard warning was issued with a snow warning for up to 30 inches of blowing and drifting snow.  This is what the stores were looking like.


But the storm didn't hit us as bad as they thought.  There was a lot of snow in the eastern side of the state.  We didn't get to 30 inches in Hartford/middle part.  We measured about 12-14 inches.  The governor still had the roads closed until Tuesday evening.  Joe ended up working from the hotel for two days.  




We didn't do much in Connecticut because of this.  But that is ok.  We did visit a fun museum yesterday though.  Who thought going to a Trash Museum would be fun?!?



Caty learned about heat this week, and we worked on how to read a simple thermometer.  She listened to the Thermometer song on You Tube.


Lydia learned about Mollusks this week.  She also watched some videos on youtube.  She started her study of the United Kingdom for her scout project.  This week we learned where it is located.  What countries make up the United Kingdom and looked at the flags of each country separately and then together.  We also learned about a famous author, Beatrix Potter.  We watched her life story in the movie, Miss Potter.  I do recommend it, wonderful movie.

Brayden is working on mixed fractions in math.  The kids is driving me nuts because he does all the steps in his head, which is good, but when he makes a mistake it is harder to show him how to fix it.  He is chugging along in his President's study.

Joey is still working his way through the time period between World War 1 and World War 2 in his history reading.  In science both boys started a fossil/dinosaur unit.

Next week brings a few changes to our schooling.  The girls are going to combine together in the subjects of science and history.  With working full-time, I am struggling doing individual projects with each of them.  I'll blog all about them as I get them figured out this weekend.  But I think I have all the books in place for this.  I am excited, let's just hope it works for them.

We also had our tea time this week together again.  We are trying to do this weekly, along with other friends in our homeschool group.  This week we had mail from our friends to open up.  Each week, we mail out poems to our friends and they mail them to us.  My sister in law is forwarding our mail on as we are traveling around.  The kids were excited.

Only one of our kids likes tea, so they had hot cocoa and hot cider this week. Cupcakes from Whole Foods...lol.


 Brayden even read a poem outloud this week!

 Joey was looking at some post cards from our postcard exchange.
 Lydia reading one morning.   We love this series of books.  She picked this out last week at the Cowgirl Museum in Texas.
 The boys working on their science.
 Lydia and I playing a grammar game.
 Caty and I working in her Usborne Art Coloring book.
 Lydia's new favorite grammar book...lol.
 Too much technology maybe?!?!  Joey, Lydia and I were on classes with Homeschool with Minecraft.  But we had another laptop set up to watch Miss Potter on our Amazon Prime.  Yeah, we are rather tied to the Internet.
Hope everyone had a great week.  We are traveling to Wisconsin this weekend.  See you next Friday.  Linking up with other homeschool moms at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap-Up


Meme Friday



Sound familiar...lol

This is soooo our house.  Caty never wants to wear clothes.



Wednesday, January 28, 2015

American Girl Grace - Book 1 Reading Comprehension Guide



I am very excited to have just finished the reading comprehension guide for the first American Girl Grace book.  This new Girl of the Year is a favorite in our house right now.  She loves to bake, she loves dogs and she gets to go to Paris.  Our girls love dogs and love to bake.  

This reading comprehension guide includes vocabulary and questions for each chapter.  I also included 1 or 2 extra project ideas.  At the end, I created a answer guide to help out parents if they are grading.  

Enjoy!!!!  You can download this freebie at the link below.

American Girl Grace - Book 1

**Please email me any corrections that you might see or information that I may have missed: renita@krazykuehnerdays.com.

Please note my terms of use:
This is for personal use only. I am providing them free of charge. You may use this at home or in a classroom. You may print as many copies as you would like. You may share the link to our blog to others interested in our packets.
You may not:
Sell or distribute this file. Host this file on your website without
permission from myself. Upload this file to a shared website (Ex.

4shared.com)


Monday, January 26, 2015

Week 34 - A Dissection, Hotel Room and Packing up



We are in our 2nd week in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  We have been taking it easy this week since we had such a busy weekend.

On Saturday we went to the Fort Worth Zoo.  It was such a wonderful trip!!!  They have a nice zoo, but the best part was spending the day with our cousins that live near here.  We haven't seen them for a couple years.  It was a beautiful day.  It wasn't without its meltdowns, but we survived.



On Sunday we took a road trip to San Antonio.  It was a 5 hour drive for us, one way.  So we packed up the cooler and headed out.  I have always wanted to see the Alamo.  On Saturday night, we let Joey watch Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.  So of course he had to ask the Security staff (who by the way were all wearing cowboy hats and sunglasses), if there was a basement.  He snickered a bit and told Joey, "Son, we have one, but you can't visit there."  I grinned and said, "You can imagine what we let him watch yesterday."  He smiled and said, "Yeah we hear that a lot."  I love security guards that have a good sense of humor and don't mind humoring Joey with the off-the-wall questions he has a tendency to ask them.  

 In San Antonio we did the River Walk boat tour.  Our guide was very good about the history of the area.
 One more treat of the day....Rainforest Cafe.  We have never taken the kids.  They all had fun, even though it was loud.

 To keep Caty distracted this week, I found a sugar cookie Ice Castle kit.  She had fun licking frosting and putting it together.  But said she doesn't want to eat it.



We'll have two more field trips tomorrow, and stops along the way to Connecticut.  Tomorrow we are going to visit the Ross Perot Science Museum again and probably the 6th Floor Museum, depending on the weather.

In our school this week,

Lydia dissected a worm for science.  She learned more about earthworms.  And yes...we did this in a hotel room...lol



A homeschool friend started a group/Book Club where we share poetry with each other.  We also try to sit down once a week and have tea and poetry together as a family.  So we had our first Tea on Tuesday.  3 of our 4 kids do not like tea.  So they had milk or juice.  I got two poetry books at Barnes and Noble that had funny poems.  I figured these would keep the interest of the kids.


Here we are working on our mailing to our friends.

 Lydia wants to start collecting Breyer Horses...ugh.  This is the first one to her collection.  It has a chapter book too.
 It was warm here in Lewisburg, so we stopped and got ice cream and ate it outside...in January.  That's a new one for us :)
 And we gave the van a much needed bath.
Our plans were shook up a bit because Lydia became ill.  So we didn't get to explore on the day that we planned, which was also our last day in Dallas area.

But we did finish all our schoolwork. Brayden is nearing the ends of his presidents book.  Joey is reading about the time in American history after World War 1.  His history is covering the expansion of manufacturing in America.  Caty is chugging along in math and is using Looney Tunes Phonics again.  She found the states of New York, Minnesota and Kentucky this week.  I don't really have a system.  Just randomly selecting them.  Lydia took her 2nd chapter test in her math curriculum.  She does not like regrouping in the thousands....but who does?!?!

It was a crazy work week for me, and of course I am way behind.  Nothing unusual there.  So I am struggling to find a way to get it all done while we are traveling the next 2 days, especially with a sick child.  It's going to be interesting.  I have a feeling I will be praying a lot.

Hope everyone had a good week.  And next week, you'll see us in Connecticut.