Lots of Activities In A Two Week Period....

This was the first week of winter....did I mention that I really dislike winter.  YUCK!!  I am not a cold  and snow person.  It really just hurts me badly.  I guess it's a pretty good thing that we never moved to Alaska!!  Well with the first day of winter this week, we pulled out the snowmen...it's time to pull down all the fall leaves.

This is just a fraction of the snowmen and snowflakes around our living room.  I love to decorate for the seasons.  Already thinking about what we can change and add for the spring.  But maybe that is only because I really want the cold to be over!!

I did plan some special treats for the first day of Winter.  Everyone got new coffee/tea/hot cocoa mugs.  Whatever they like to drink out of them. Plus we got a couple new board games to play this winter.  Daddy's mug shows a cool Star Wars scene when it's hot.

I made snowman cinnamon rolls for breakfast and had snowmen plate out for them.  They also got new blankets to keep warm now that it's even colder!!!

We happened to get a good amount of snow, and I can't believe I almost forgot to make snowcream with the kids!!  Thankful my friend reminded me.  The kids loved making and eating it!!

I was quickly reminded about the mess of winter though... and this is with coat hooks and a place to leave boots.

In Home Economics this week, the boys finished up their studies by learning how to use the crock pot and made crock pot lasagna.  This has now become a favorite meal and we have made it several times now.

In Science/Art Club we work on Layers of the Ocean experiment.  We set up 3 glasses of water and layered the colors of blue.  Then they used a mirror to see which layer that allowed the most light to reflect through it.  Obviously the Sunlight Zone reflected the most light (as you can see at the top).

The girls watched a few ocean videos as they made their way through their unit study:

For Art History we worked on DaVinci and drawing human form.  The kids watched a Youtube video on how to draw the Mona Lisa.  They had fun with this one.  I drew one also!

Geography 

We finished up the rest of Central America this week.  Caty found a recipe for Homemade Eggnog in one of the country books we were reading.  She made a big batch and really liked it.

Honduras

Raining Fish in Honduras

Lobster Diving in Central American (near Honduras and Nicaragua)

Caty found a recipes Honduras -  Egg Nog.  The link here is close.  The recipe she used contained no condensed milk.

Costa Rica

Stone Spheres of Costa Rica

Agua Dulce - Drink of Costa Rica...the girls didn't love this, but they said it was different.

 History

The girls and I visited Pompeii this week.

We also covered more on the Roman Empire and Constantine the Great

And a Lesson on the Silk Road too.

We are almost done with Volume 1of Notgrass From Adam to Us.  We'll be done by the end of January.  Then we will be doing a unit on Ohio History to meet Lydia's grade level requirement.

Caty wanted to watch something weird.  So she and I found some weird videos to watch:

 

They had cheerleading practice.

And Caty had an eye checkup.  We will have several follow-ups to keep watch her eyes.  She did test that she does not have visual perception delay.  So we're not sure whether her eyes are causing her struggles or if she has a different type of learning delay.  But she did have to get new lenses for her glasses, since her prescription strength needed to be upped.

We took the last week of December off, and only met for Science Club and we also had a couple game days with friends.  It was a lot of fun!

This is how we spent our time off....

Playing games....

In one of the  Art clubs over break, they learned about Rembrandt and did a carving project with soap.  It was a very messing project.

Playing our new Scrabble  Tiles game.

Going to friends for lunch.

Caty working on her spelling while playing games on the Xbox with us.

We had a hawk in our back yard.

Sent out caring cards.

Riding

 Played Bingo using a Firestick app.

In another Art Club meetup they learned about Michaelangelo and painted pictures like they were painting on the ceiling.

It was a busy couple weeks, but we got done and the kids got a break (not much for me).  But a week off to catch up on a few things.

Hope everyone had a great time.  We'll be up and running through January!  See you next week!!