Monday, January 28, 2019

Making their own Squishees



We got a great book from Scholastic book order that showed how to make squishes using memory foam.  So Caty decided to make a box of french fries...



Lydia decided to make Knuffle Bunny her favorite Mo Willems book.






They turned out really well.  They ended up using watered down acrylic paint, fabric paint, and puffy paint to create their masterpieces.  This took a few days to finish since they had to wait for paint layers to dry.



Saturday, January 26, 2019

Artist/Musician Fair, Cleaning, Basketball, and Just Surviving the Snow



I can't believe I used to want to move to Alaska.  Maybe just visit someday now.  My autoimmune issues make dealing with the cold extremely hard.  We are not in a place to move anywhere warm, so I just do the best I can when we have extreme cold.  This week is one of those times.  We actually have been reaching temperatures in the negatives, and that's the temp...not just the wind chill.  YUCK!!!


We were supposed to get to go to Tennessee with Joe this week.  He hasn't been to his office there since his heart attack.  This would have been our first trip back, and Snow stood in our way.  We got a nasty snow storm over the weekend.  We ended up with roughly 8 inches of snow with strong winds and white out conditions.  It was worse south of us, which is what we would have had to drive through all the way to the north end of Kentucky.  The girls had their Artist/Musician Fair on Friday, so we couldn't extend our trip.  I guess we will try again in March/April.  At least it'll be warmer in Tennessee by then.  They always seem to get an early spring by that time!  We've been there in April and been in the upper 70s/lower 80s.  I can handle that.

It was a BIG week for basketball in our house.  The boys had 3 games and 1 regular practice this week.  Plus the girls had a game, and the boys were there for back-up, since we have a very small youth team.

The girl's team won, and the boy's team lost 1 game and won 2 games this week.





I figure I'd better start tackling a few of my cleaning projects that have been piling up.  One of them was to declutter the kids book shelves in the living room.  I have a bit of a shopping problem with books, and since we have an account on Scholastic, it's easy to feed that habit.  We have several books that we have multiple copies of because we have books that many of them are reading at the same time.  Or at least they were for the last couple years.  Not so much now.  So definitely time to clean the shelves.


The donation/sale pile when I got done.


Another example of the rough week....my spine and neck have been swollen either due to hidden sugar in my diet or the weather or both...I ended up in a sling most of the week.  I still cannot move my right arm high enough to put on deodorant.  It's painful, but life still must go on.


Joey had "Crazy" Week at the Day-hab.  Monday was Red Day and Tuesday was Crazy Socks Day.  They had to cancel Monday due to weather.  So he combined Red Day and Crazy Socks day together.



There was a Crazy hat Day too...


Long division with remainders this week....need I even explain how rough this was?!?!  She caught on really quickly, but the stress of all the steps made her very upset and it was a rough time.


Caty finished up her Math level on Teaching Textbooks and is catching up.  She started her next level this week, mid week.  No rest for the weary...lol.  Math has been a real struggle area for both the girls.  Lydia "hates" math so it takes her longer because even when she gets it, she's whining and causes her problems.  But Caty really struggles due to learning disabilities.  Teaching Textbooks seems to be helping in this area for her.

Caty made a yummy lunch of homemade tomato soup on Tuesday.  She loved it!  I made cheese toasties to go with it.


 She was asked to make a couple dozen cookies for a friend of ours.  So one morning Caty and I spent a couple hours making sure she got her order ready.



Our country this week in Geography was Ukraine.  We watched some great videos and learned about the flag.  Our meal was dumpling and potatoes with cooked cabbage.  Caty loved it.  (It's really a diabetic nightmare though.)  Joe did not like the onions.



We are using Primary Language Lessons - Part 2 to work on our sentence structure and language skills.  This week their poem was about appreciating the Earth.  They were supposed to create beautiful art to show what they appreciate.  Caty snuck  and did her art digitally...lol  She is learning how to use Paint she said...lol


She wanted to make grape flavored rock candy to show solutions in science.  I'll update next week if this works for her.




On Friday, our homeschool group hosted an Artist/Musician Fair.  Each girl has been working on a project for a few weeks.  Caty did hers on Bob Ross, her new favorite artist.


Lydia on Beethoven because she's dying to learn to play Fur Elise.


Lydia played a basic version of Ode to Joy she has been learning at the piano lessons.




It's been a rough week with pain for myself and fighting to keep up.  But we have managed to survive.  Got our work done and plans set for next week.  Lots more basketball.  Hoping for a quick spring here, but the cold is going to only get worse for us in Ohio.  I'm not sure if my body will be able to handle too many weeks of these frigid conditions.

Hope that you had a wonderful week!  Linking up with other families...

Homeschool Coffee Break




Saturday, January 19, 2019

Life is Currently A Full Roller Coaster Ride - But Learning Continues



What a busy week we had....but that is not the new usual.  I'm trying hard to fight to find a way of keeping up with our new way of life.  There's are roughly 12 alarms set on my phone for daily meds.  This week Caty received her asthma diagnosis on top of the Type 2 diagnosis just three months ago.  She was also diagnosed with sleep apnea, and will be receiving a CPAP machine in the next month or so.  More diagnostics to go before she gets that.  It has been overwhelming to say the least.


Brayden still wanting to cook more!  He decided to take canned chicken and dumplings and make it deluxe.  He mixes in veggies to create his new soup.  He LOVES this!!



Meet our newest family member.... Hershey.  Lydia's new rabbit for 4H.  It's a Netherland Dwarf.



This week in Geography we traveled the remaining Scandinavian countries.



In Science they worked on the States of Matter experiments....

Gases



 Liquids

We used these glass beads to represent particles.



The girls also looked at the crystalline patterns with solids.  They used a frozen chocolate bar and salt to compare.






In Science Club they worked on separating particles with a 6V battery


They created chemical changes...baking cookies


And worked on creating energy to knock the cup over.



Girls had basketball practice.  The boys did too, plus they had a game this week.  Their other game was cancelled due to that yucky snowstorm we got on Saturday.





Joe is working on his cardiac rehab at our local gym.  He has the new apple watch, so that we can watch his heart rate.  I had a personal best this week.  I actually finished 4 miles in 30 minutes.  The machine wouldn't register though after the first 30 minutes, so I had to restart it in order to finish the final 0.03 miles...how crazy.  But great for me.


Unfortunately we ended up back in the ER that night with Joe.  He had some chest pains on the treadmill, but his heart rate wasn't changing.  The ER dr said his magnesium level was low, so they gave him an infusion.  He had a few more pains the rest of the week.  He had bloodwork follow-up on Tuesday to check his levels again.  Not sure if he will have to be on supplements yet.  Plus he had a trip to the chiropractor to help with his shoulder pain.  He may have some swollen chest muscles causing the pain.  Not sure yet.  We'll wait until after appointment on Tuesday to find out more.  The pains seemed to have moved from his sternum to his shoulder area again.

Saturday we got about 8-9 inches of snow with frigid temperatures.  So I baked some low-carb yummy treats for the family.



Plus had to clear the driveway twice!  I ended up clearing it a third time on Sunday.  I didn't let the boys do it because of the frigid temps we also received.  But last weekend they did help us clear the driveway.



In History one of our lessons was on the history of the Taj Mahal, so we made Butter chicken again for lunch at Caty's request.


She really loves this dish.

Both girls finished their Teaching Textbook levels and advanced onto the next grade.  That means Lydia is almost caught up in math and Caty is running just a grade level behind!!  Very excited about this!!

Hope everyone had a great week!!!  Linking up with other moms at:

Weekly Wrap-Up

Homeschool Coffee Break