Week 44 - Loving Chickens, The Ten Commandments and it's Electricity

It was a pretty low-key week.  Just school and work.  I did get some cooking done this week for a few yummy dinners.

Never made lamb chops before.  They were not bad.

 Chicken salad wrap I made for myself for lunch one day.

 Steak wraps with asparagus & Carrots and served topped with chevre.  Yummy!!

So we worked on schoolwork, watched movies and the girls played basketball with Joe a couple times.  I have been having horrible upper back troubles, so shooting baskets was tough.

In our school work this week......

Miss Caty has been learning about chickens this week to go along with her 4H Cloverbuds group project.  This week she watched a few videos, including Magic School Bus Cracks a Yolk.  We also watched a video of chickens hatching and this video from Australia about the difference in eggs and a look at a chicken farm there.

In poetry class she learned about haikus and this is the poem she came up with.  Goes with chickens and poetry....lol

We read a book about the chicken life cycle and how we get eggs....

 And then she created a model of the chicken life cycle from Model Magic.

We also read

After she finished her models, she realized the picture I showed her to create off of was a set we could buy.  She asked me, "Why didn't we just buy it?"  I responded, "Would that have been as much fun?"  She admitted that it would not have been.

She is working hard on her Pinewood Derby car. (and yes, we are doing all this from our hotel room!!)

The Frozen Wonder is still a work in progress....she is working on more details she says.  I guess we'll wait and see.

Joey has been working on his 4H Electricity book.  He is working on the Magic of Electricity 1.  This week it was more circuit work.  We learned more about batteries this week.  This is one video he watched.

We bought this Electricity Discovery Kit from Amazon to do his experiments with.  I highly recommend this, because we tried to get the pieces by ordering them and it was a pain.  Everything we needed has been in this kit.

This week he looked at a flashlight and how the parts work together.

 Actually ripped it apart to see all the connections.

 Working on circuits with daddy.

He has one more week of circuit work.  Next week he starts on magnets.

He is doing really well with recognizing coins and adding them, mostly in his head.  He still is struggling with subtractions, so instead of him getting frustrated he is using a calculator.  I think when we get home, we will use our play money to do some practice exercises.  This is a huge thing for Joey.  He has struggled with adding and counting money for a while.

 Lydia had a week continuing her money unit in Math.  She has picked it up really well on paper, so now it's time for real world experience like Joey is getting.

She also had a full week of 4H projects.   In her Snack Attack she looked at dairy.  She is checking the nutrition label on our milk.

 She made homemade tortilla chips (with flour shells)...and made nachos for the other kids for lunch.

 For Joey...

 She worked hard on her Pinewood Derby car...

 The Ruby Twister is on its way...still working on it.

 Brayden learned about atoms this week.  He made a few models of atoms.  I don't think he totally grasps this, but he at least knows the terms if he hears them.

 In Bible study we learned about the Ten Commandments this week.  The kids made their own clay tablets.

 And then we learned about the golden calf.  I showed them how easy it is to make an image to see by using candy.  They made candy molds.

 They loved it and it was easy to do...15 minutes.

 But then it all easily disappeared as they ate.  Or could be remelted again.  We then talked about how God is forever, and images are only temporary.  They can be lost and destroyed.

We had a fairly good week.  Some ups and downs, which are pretty normal in our lives.  Joey is very sensitive to certain foods and he got a little too much corn products one day so he melted a lot.

I did get the kids on April Fools Day.  Joe tied their shoe laces together.  I changed out their snacks and made them "fake scrambled eggs" for breakfast.  I have one more trick to play on them, but didn't finish in time that day.  So going to pull it on them still, just a few days late.  I love food pranks on them.

Joey hates scrambled eggs, so I diced up frozen waffles and sauteed with bacon bits and put his Diya cheese on it.  He thought I was serving him scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon.  He was freaked out.  But he loved this new combination.

I hope everyone had a nice week.

Linking up with other moms at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

and Homeschool Mother's Journal

Week 43 - Electricity, Spring Weather and Whole Foods

We are chugging along.  It's sad when we have been in the DC area long enough, that there is not much that the kids still want to see.  We opted out of the Kite Festival this weekend because of projected crowds.  Joey DOES NOT do well in high crowd situations.  So we decided to skip it.  Just going to Best Buy yesterday was a bit too much for him.  The high noise level was too much for him.
We pretty much just worked on schoolwork all week.  It was normal life.  We did watch the new Annie movie when we finished our work the other day.  The girls really like that movie.

This week Caty almost finished Book A in First Start Reading (watch for our review next month).  Next week we will be doing our review of the new words we are learning.  I had her start watching Meet the Sight Words 1.  I included that to help her along.  She likes watching the Leap Frog videos, so I figure this will only help her.

She also worked on a new program we are reviewing called LaLaLogic (watch for the review next month).  She is in the early weeks, so a lot of brain review for her.  She likes this program, and wants to do it daily.

They learned about shape poems in their last poetry class.  Caty did one on rainbows...go figure.

In Art this week, she continued watching Creative Galaxy.  Then she created a spring scene using colored paper and cupcake wrappers.

In science we spent the week reviewing seasons.  These are two of the books we read.

We also went for a walk on a really nice day this week.  We have just learned about tree buds in science and she found some growing on the trees.

Caty started her Pinewood Derby Car this week.  She has decided on making The Frozen Wonder....shocker...huh!

Lydia is working on her 4H Projects right now.  This week she has almost finished her Shopping for Less project.  She found a different outfit, that was less money.  She returned the other bought the new one.

She had $20.00 to spend.  She came in at $18.75 to spend.  She got what she wanted, a spring/summer dress.  She thought about a tank top dress, but knew she could only really wear it when it was very warm.  This one she can wear in cooler temps also.  Plus the daisy is blingy.

For one of her Snack Attack projects she made a berry sherbert.  It didn't work out quite as well as she wanted.  We used coconut milk so that Joey could eat it.  Next time, we decided to make it sorbet style and just use water.  But she used frozen cherries and blueberries.  It was good except for the overpowering coconut flavor.

She also made Confetti Salsa, another project from her Snack Attack book.

Her shape poem was of an iron ore block from Minecraft.

She started her digital photography class this week.  So she was out taking pictures for her first week's assignment.

Another project in Snack Attack was to visit the grocery store and check out the Rainbow of fruits and veggies.  So we headed to Whole Foods.

 They all helped fill out the Rainbow chart and then each picked some new fruits and veggies to try.

The boys were working on their typical work.  Although Joey is working on his 4H Electricity book.

He did one experiment this week.  He built a circuit to light a battery.

Brayden showed that he can read a Magic Tree House book fairly quickly.  He read one in 3 days.  Which I find funny, considering he claims they are too hard.  He was making it all up.  The 4H projects that the boys have coming up, we will be doing when we get home.  We have to do some poster work, which is a little more than I want to transport on this trip.  They have plenty of time to finish them.  Brayden is doing an early 4H project and both boys are doing Discovering Healthy You.  Their work is a lot more hands-on for me.  

The sun was out a few days this week, so the kids enjoyed the bball court and even played with a couple other kids that are staying here.

 We enjoyed the sunshine on a family walk too.

 Trying chicken sauteed with zucchini and summer squash.

 Joey wasn't sure about it, but tried a veggie anyway.  He said it was, "OK".

 Caty was in love with the orange juice machine at Whole Foods.

We had a fairly good week.  Still had some fighting about getting stuff done.  But it was mainly just Lydia.  The boys attempted to "Skip" some projects, but they realized that I was checking their work nightly, so they couldn't do that anymore.  I did keep an eye on them when I realized what they were doing.

We are taking Saturday easy.  Just too much been going on, and vegging most of the day.  We don't do that much when we travel.  So thought we needed it.

Hope everyone had a great week!

Linking up with other Homeschool Moms at :

Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

and Homeschool Mothers Journal