Week 20: Jan 11-15

....and the illness continues.  Daddy stayed home from work for three days per doctors orders for pneumonia.  He went back to work today but is only working part of the day.  I worry about him because he has a history of pneumonia and asthma.  The doctor told him on Monday that he would have ended up in the hospital, had he not gone to see her that day.

It was weird having him home.  Usually he is only off work on the weekends and so we don't do any schoolwork those two days.  It was hard to get moving every day this week because it felt like a weekend!

We were suppose to go to a bowling party with our homeschool group, but Drake had a bit of fever and Gabriel and I were still coughing.  I did not want to pass on those horrible germs we've been dealing with these past two weeks!!  The boys were upset but Daddy promised to take us all bowling as soon as he is feeling better! 

I sat down and mapped out our next semester.  Nathan should finish Math 65 in early April and start Math 76 after our April 19-23 spring break.  I was hoping he would be further along by now but we took some extra time to review those pesky fractions.  Still he is doing very well right now, conquering decimals.  He is on track to finish R&S English by the second week of May, and we'll take a nice break before moving on.  We will finish up Apologia Astronomy in just a few short weeks.  We are going to take a small break to learn about airplanes per Kaleb's request.  Then we will pick back up with Apologia Botany.  We are behind in MOH but should still finish by June.  Kaleb has moved into ETC book 2 and will finish it in May.  OPGTR will be an on-going subject through the summer and possibly fall.  He should finish up Math 1 by June and be ready to move into Math 2 in July.

That's the plan anyway....and we all know how quickly plans change!  :)  I feel better having the plan though and hopefully we can stick to it or at least as close as possible.

I spent the weekend getting our astronomy and MOH notebooks updated.  The boys spent this week (instead of the *planned* last week) working on lapbooking/notebooking pages in the notebooks.  I LOVE the astronomy notebook!!  I just have to share some pictures!

I thought I would share a few pictures of our Apologia notebook pages.

I love the lapbook mini-books.  Nathan does NOT like lapbooking.  However, I have yet to find something that keeps his attention and helps him remember so well.  Those little mini-books do the job while worksheets do not.  Instead of making a lapbook for each chapter, I just put the each chapter's mini-books on a sheets of construction paper cut down to fit in our notebook. These lapbook mini-books came from the Notebooking2Learn yahoo group.

The book I have open is a vocab book.  I love these!!  There is one for each chapter.

I also keep their drawings in the notebook.  How fun will it be to look at these when they are older? Here are a few of my faves.



We do narration everyday and add that to our notebooks.  As well as the quizzes and any other related materials.

I have taken pictures of our experiments and non-paper craft activities, and plan to print them to add to the notebooks as well.

I found chapter quizzes on the Apologia yahoo group.

I also found these cute printables in the Apologia yahoo group files.

I saw this fun little color experiment on Susana's blog.  Super easy and my boys LOVED it!

Kaleb enjoyed this week's ABC I Believe lesson.  You can read about it and see pictures *HERE* on Gabriel's preschool post.

Here are a few random pictures of Nathan and Kaleb this week.

Both did well on their schoolwork even though Daddy was a HUGE distraction.   We have a little catch-up to do next week, but it won't be a problem.  Besides Daddy being sick and missing the bowling party, we had a really good week!!

Gabriel's preschool post is here if you would like to read it!!

Week 19: Jan 4-8

I had a plan....*had* being the operative word.

Last week I looked over our materials to see where we ware with everything and where my master schedule says we should be.  I had everything mapped out for this next week, and planned on spending Sunday evening printing off the copies I need for the week, cleaning up the school room, and getting our work-file-boxes ready for the week.

Then Saturday night I started feeling sick, and Gabriel had a terrible cough that kept the two of us up most of the night.  By Sunday morning, my throat was sore, my head and body ached, and I had a fever.  I was SICK!  I spent the day either in bed or on the couch....horizontal all day.  Nothing was checked off my to-do-look-at-me-all-organized-and-ready-for-the-week list. 

Gabriel, thankfully, is feeling great now.  Kaleb has a little cough but seems to feel just fine.  Drake and Nathan are feeling fine.  Drake is the one who picked up this little bug last week.  Daddy feels a little achy but so far no other symptoms. 

I felt a little better by Monday but had NO energy.  We trudged through the day.  Nathan completed the majority of his work.  Kaleb and I managed a reading and math lesson.  I worked sporadically on the school room.  I put a chicken in the crock pot.  In between all of that and loads of laundry, I spent my day on the couch....horizontal.  My wonderful, caring, considerate husband finished dinner by making chicken and dumplings.

By day two--lost my voice and gained a fever back. 

Day three--a little better but couldn't talk to anyone....thus no school.  Nathan did what he could on his own and I had Kaleb read some BOB books for me, easy ones that I knew I wouldn't need to correct.

Day four--much better and I could talk a little.  Took the boys to meet Daddy for lunch.  It was 18* with 25-30 mph winds.  Our outing didn't last long.

Day five--flat on my back again.  I think the outing the day before and all the housecleaning I did wore me out.

So much for our super awesome start to the second semester of school.  :)

The daddy started getting sick Saturday and by Sunday, he was flat on his back.  Hopefully he will feel much better by Monday since he is needed back at work.

I have a really bad cough still but feel much, much better.  I have managed to get all the printing, cutting, and pasting done in preparation for this week.  We have a lot lapbooking to do in history and science along with a bowling playdate.  I have many fun things for Gabriel and Drake planned as well.  I look forward to a fun and educational time with the boys!!

Nathan did complete 6 math lessons and take a test!  He was a bit behind on our schedule so he worked extra hard to get caught up.  Since we didn't do history or science all week and only a couple English lessons before I lost my voice, he had some extra time and put it to good use.  He also completed a week in WW and R&S spelling.  We organized his work filebox since that was a bit of a mess.  We reorganized his notebooks too.  We talked a bit about having a little more respect for his school things so they stay neat and orderly.  Hopefully that will help. 

Kaleb did some fun math worksheets from a workbook I found in the $ bin at Target.  He read a few BOB books and worked in his ETC.  He is in book 2 now and thinks he is such the big boy!!  His daddy helped him review some words from OPG from the word ring.

Week 16-18: Dec 14-Jan 1

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!!  Again, it's been almost a month since I've blogged.  With the holiday season behind us, I hopefully will have more time to blog at least weekly again.

Our break was a short one.  We only took Dec 23-25 and Jan 1st off from school.  It was hard getting back in a groove after our long November break.  I wasn't so ready to go through that again. We didn't accomplish much in science and history though.  After the three R's, we baked and baked and baked.  Then I cooked and cooked and cooked.  We did a few more Christmas crafts.

Out of state family made it in on Dec 22.  We put the books away by lunch and spent the next few days enjoying family time.  We had an awesome Christmas.  Kaleb declared it the BEST Christmas EVER.  Daddy had FOUR days off in a row so the boys were super excited to have all that Daddy time.  We even had a WHITE Christmas!  I think we got about 2-3 inches of snow on Christmas Eve night.  FUN!

The boys received a TON of cool board games.  We have been playing a couple every night since Christmas.

Back to school on Dec 28th with just the three R's again before another little break yesterday.  Bo and I went out with some friends for New Year's Eve.  My mom stayed with the boys.  Nathan was up when we got home.  The other three boys and their nana were sleeping! Nathan said he woke up Kaleb for the ball drop because Kaleb really wanted to see it.  He was back asleep in less than five minutes afterward....and doesn't even remember Nathan waking him!  He was a little upset when he woke up in the morning and realized he didn't remember.

We're having a lazy holiday weekend.  The Razorbacks are playing in a bowl game this evening.  We will be watching that and Nathan is having a cousin stay overnight. 

I have been getting everything organized for next week.  We will be back to our regular school schedule.  This week in history and science will be spent on getting all of our activities caught up.  Then my goal for the rest of the school year is to NOT get behind with the activities again!  We shall see....  :)  The rest of the subjectsWe dropped the ABC I Believe curriculum in early fall when the activities got to be too much.  We're just now picking it back up.  If we work hard and stay on track with it, Gabriel will be ready to start ETC A after our summer break.  I had planned on him starting ETC in May after his 4th birthday, but this will work out too.  Kaleb is doing SO well with reading!  We LOVE OPG!!  He enjoys reading BOB books over and over again too.  He finally is calling himself a *real* reader! lol  Nathan is doing well in math!  He is getting into decimals.  So far he says decimals are a *piece of cake*.  I hope that holds out for him.  He is still doing Math Mammoth Fractions 1 (blue series).  I really think it is helping him get a better grasp on fractions, and gives him a good review.  I will probably be getting more from MM.  Very inexpensive, colorful, and fun review.

Below are a few of our Christmas scrapbook pages.  I have two pages left to do and then December will be DONE!  I plan on spending January getting 2009 pages wrapped up and printed. (my plan anyway...)

I hope you all had a great holiday season!

Week 14-15: Nov 30-Dec 11

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last blogged!  Just a few days after my last post, everything spun out of control when my baby boy BROKE my nose!!  We took the whole week off from everything because of the headache and pain in my face that I thought would never leave.  It all went downhill from there.  We  struggled to just get the basics done, and then all of a sudden it was the week of Thanksgiving.  That whole week was spent cooking and baking.

Finally we are back on track.....I think.

Here are a few of our activities from the past couple of weeks.

• A visit to a local Christmas tree farm where we were allowed to roam the fields and then learned how to make beautiful wreaths.
• Christmas caroling through a historic downtown city.
• baking, baking, baking Christmas cookies.
• crafting, crafting, crafting.
• beautiful Advent paper chain with fun activities on each link for each day.

And in the middle of all the fun, we are managing to get quite a bit of school work completed.  We may even recover from our unexpected break before Christmas!  Regardless, we will only be taking Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the weekend off from school work.  Breaks just don't work well for us.  We need to stay on track and keep moving along.  Since we are getting in plenty of crafting and baking fun, as well as many fun Christmas books, I don't think the boys will mind.

We will spend next week getting caught up on all of our history and science activities/drawings.  It seems we are always getting behind with those.

Below are some pictures of our activities.  Enjoy!

Week 13: Nov 2-6

First, some pictures!!!

Our co-op presentation was held last Friday night.  This is Gabriel (far left in blue) singing his number song with some of his preschool friends and their awesome teacher.

 

Gabriel was a little embarrassed to be on stage but did a great job!!

 

 Nathan received his CSI kit from his CSI teacher.

 

 

Nathan also received his first place backgammon game award!!  He was very exited about this.

Nathan with some of his new friends.

 Gabriel loves his preschool bag games!  This matching game was a lot of fun!!

 

 Kaleb works hard on a word search of cvc words.

 

Some fun word family sliders I made for Kaleb this week.  I found them in a book called Hands-On Phonics Awareness for Elementary Children.  Great book with a lot of good fun game ideas.  I LOVE these fun hands on activities for the boys, and plan to make some family word wheels and more word sliders from the ABC Teach website.

Cheesy Draker.  This was taken on the last day of co-op.

Just a couple of soccer pics from Nathan and Kaleb's games this week.  We played a total of six this week with two more on the schedule for tomorrow.  We're trying to get all those rained-out games in before season ends.

I took some pictures of the boys with our Jack-O-Lantern this week.

Nathan accomplished-
R&S English:  completed four lessons.   We have made it into familiar territory for Nathan--verbs, and we are cruising along nicely.  I have been combining a few lessons here and there as well as having him just do a few lessons orally.
Saxon Math: completed three lessons plus some Math Mammoth fraction work.  We have been so unorganized since all the activities started that we misplaced his math book for a while.  He had been doing math lessons at the library and thought we left it there so we started in with 7/6 until we found it.  He completed two lessons.
WW-set this aside until this slow down a bit
R&S Spelling-also set this aside

Kaleb accomplished-
OPGTR: lesson 50-53.  We're splitting those big lessons in half right now and reviewing heavily from ending blends on.  He has also been working on a few ending and beginning blends worksheets I found online.  I'm putting together some fun activities and games to go along with OPG and serve as a review.
ETC:  Kaleb LOVES ETC and I love it for him, but it is sloooooooow.  We're almost finished with book one and still in cvc words!  Still a good review and Kaleb can do it on his own.
Saxon Math:  We've had to put this off until things slow down a bit.  We have just been playing some fun math games, and Kaleb taught himself how to count and add by tens!!

Together-
History: We have made it through the Legend of the Trojan Horse.  I hope to move a bit faster in the next couple of weeks and get caught up again on our timeline and memory cards.
Science:  We finished up Ch 7 Space Rocks.  We spent a lot of time on You Tube looking at videos of comets, asteroids, and such.  Fun!  A week or so ago, we got to see a bit of Orionid asteroids.  Awesome timing!

Since co-op and soccer have ending, we're down to just weekly golf lessons.  Next week we will add back all that was put off, and get back into using our workboxes.  We got into sort of a survival mode during these busy weeks.  Nathan had his books piled on the table in the school room and I had Kaleb's books piled on the end table in the living room, and just did what we could when we could.  I'm READY to get back to a more organized day, and I'm ready to put more FUN back into our school day.