Each week seems to be getting better and better! We had a great week and accomplished a
lot…even some FUN stuff!
Monday was spent running errands, going to my doctor’s
appointment, cleaning house, doing laundry, and driving to our apartment in
eastern AR. My ultrasound went very
well. Baby boy is perfectly healthy and
growing right on track. I am SO relieved.
I’ve never been so worried about a baby before. This pregnancy is just
so different from the other four boys….makes me nervous. We spent Monday evening watching the movie
Courageous. LOVE that movie!
 |
| A healthy baby boy all rolled up into a ball. |
Drake is working on learning the alphabet. He has found a
new love—coloring! I could never get the
older boys to color but he seems to be really enjoying it. I love having a coloring partner!
I planned on getting up early on Tuesday morning but someone
{ahem…my oldest} turned off my alarm for me. We got a late start but managed to
get a full day of schoolwork in AND do our grocery shopping. We {re}started our botany study, using
Apologia’s Botany science book. Nathan
is following along with us even though he is also working in Apologia Gen
Science. The younger books are so much
fun and we all learn so much from them.
We tried started Botany several times over the last year but it just
never stuck. We’re taking a little bit
different approach this time and so far it’s working. We’re making up our own fun activities along
with picking the ones that look the most fun from the book. On Tuesday we classified Legos and talked
about how we would classify ourselves in our church {like the example in the
book}.
Gabriel is making HUGE strides in reading and math! We kind of hit a road block a couple of weeks
ago but we just took a little time off and worked on verbal math facts. He hit the road running this week!
I managed to get up early on Wednesday but the morning
quickly went downhill. The puppies made
a terrible mess in their crate overnight and both big dogs waited until Nathan
brought them back inside to do their business.
It was a MESS. Nathan and I got
off on the wrong foot and I ended up yelling at everyone. I decided to go back to bed for a few
minutes, called the hubs to vent, and then settled myself before going out and
apologizing to the boys for my behavior.
I thought maybe a fun activity would get us back on track so we made
these:
Since we talked bout taxonomy and did some verbal
classification on Tuesday, I thought it would be fun to have a visual of
taxonomy. I took the idea from a pin on
Pinterest that actually is for geography. The idea worked well for our little
science project. The little two just
scientifically classified themselves, and mostly I did Drake’s for him. Gabriel did a great job and even though he
didn’t completely understand, he did grasp the idea of classifying—“putting
things in order” and “grouping things that are alike.” For a five year old, I think he did
great and got in some good handwriting practice! I asked the older two boys to
classify themselves scientifically and socially {we make it up based on an
example in the book}.
Kingdom: Children
Phylym: school type (homeschool, public school, private
school)
Class: grade
Order: age
Family: male or female
Genus: last name
Species: first name
So they filled in each category based on their personal
info. That was fun! Then I asked them to pick any plant and
classify it {after all, we ARE studying Botany!}. Nathan picked the red rose and Kaleb picked
the Venus fly trap. It was just the
activity to get us back on track and complete a full day of schoolwork! When I said “ok, time to do the rest of our
schoolwork,” Kaleb asked “that was work?
I didn’t know. It was too much
fun to be work.” J Just what we needed for sure!
Kaleb is moving along in math. We’re working on carrying over in addition
and borrowing in subtraction. We both
still LOVE Math Mammoth. Grammar and
phonics are also going well. After
finishing Ordinary Parents Guide, I’m trying to find something else for him.
Until then, he is just reading on his own and outloud to me at least once a
day.
We had another great day of school on Thursday. Nothing super special about the day other than
we accomplished everything we had planned.
Nathan is finally getting back into an independent
groove. Most days he completes his work
with very little prodding from me. Maybe
he’s starting to realize the free time he would have if he just buckles down
and gets the work done. He is doing very
well in pre-algebra. I think he actually
likes it!
We drove home Friday morning....and had quite the experience. This was the last trip home with the puppies as the three we aren't keeping have homes. This was the first time since they were born that they cried about 3/4 of the trip home. They also had four *accidents* each in the crate which was also a first. We lost my debit cards somewhere in a 100 mile stretch of interstate during one of the several stops we had to make. The trip home also involved vomit and car trouble. Ha! It was insanity at it's best in my car for sure! The trip took an extra hour and almost a half due to all the troubles. Thankfully we made it home in one piece with just enough time to leave again for the last co-op planning meeting and some birthday party planning. Nathan and I stayed up late baking and making the coconut cream pie cake pops for his birthday party on Saturday. It was a fun and relaxing way to end the day! Nathan did a fabulous job with the cake pops!
Nathan ended his birthweek with a great birthday party with many friends and family. He had a blast!
Since we'll be home this coming week, it's time to get more serious about our history fair projects and finish all the notebooking/vocab work from our week of botany. The Apologia book Who is Our God? hasn't arrived yet so I'm hoping to get that this week. I'm hoping we'll be able to add our geography study back in now and do some fun history crafts.
I hope everyone else has a fun and successful week of school!
