Three weeks' worth of review!!! Tons of pictures!!!

Backwards! I loaded these pics wrong but don't have enough time to change them!! Our three weeks in reverse!

March 30 week.



Baseball practice started this week. Nathan and Kaleb are both playing. This is Kaleb's first year of t-ball and I am his COACH!!! lol I'm so excited and he is too.



Here is a picture of Kaleb entertaining the crowd of parents with his air guitar while patiently waiting his turn at batting practice.






Gabriel had a hard time coming to terms that he wasn't old enough this year so Daddy took him to the little park in front of the fields. A lady told him how cute he was and asked his name. He told her, and she said "JD?" Gabriel said, "NO! Gabriel! G-A-B-R-I-E-L! Gabriel!" lol

After two short weeks, we're ready to get back at it. Nathan started the TLP's Cricket in Times Square. Finally! A language arts program that is actually challenging him! I love it and he "kind of likes it." lol

We took the whole two weeks off of math because he was just so stressed. We are slowly getting back into it this week. He struggles with fractions and right now he is learning how to add/subtract unlike fractions. Not fun. We'll just work slowly through and make sure he gets it before moving on.

I think I mentioned that we dropped our history program. I didn't enjoy it, Nathan couldn't stand it, and Kaleb wasn't interested in it. I finished typing out the schedule for the ancients and we'll start that next week. I am very excited about it! I have many, many hands-on activities planned for the boys that I know they'll love. Plus I LOVE our new history spine-MOH. I've been reading it for the past few weeks!

We're putting off the rest of our human anatomy study until after Easter. I have the lapbook ready for when we jump back in there.

I also put together two lapbooks for Easter. They are here and here. We're working on the second link right now. The boys LOVED doing the St. Patrick's Day lapbook (I'll share that later).

Tot School update-

We started week one of the LOTW two weeks ago, but didn't finish due to our short week. We finished up A and moved on to B. We'll finish up B this weekend so we can being C next week. I'll admit, it has been fun and I will soon have pics to show off what the littles have done.

Kaleb has been working on reading cvc words lately and just struggling to blend those sounds together. He'll get one every now and then, but I decided to just work on spelling the words which he loves. I've been letting him watch the LeapFrog dvd's about once a day and we've recently been checking out the starfall.com website.


March 23 week.

Chuck E Cheese on Wednesday with friends.







Waving bye-bye to daddy.

Isn't he too cute for words????

Birthday dinner at our favorite seafood restaurant.

We left Monday morning for the Little Rock Zoo. We spent the day there and had a great time. Then we went to Searcy where Daddy is working and spent the night with him in the hotel. We swam in the pool which was still a little too cold for my liking! lol Then we left mid-morning on Tuesday to get home in time for a quick rest before Drake's first birthday dinner. We took the rest of the week off since all of the boys' friends were out of school for spring , Chuck E Cheese time with some friends, and we were getting ready for Drake's birthday party on Saturday.

Kaleb and Gabriel are feeding a bird.

Nathan feeding the birds.

Isn't it pretty?

A picture with Daddy. lol Just kidding!!

The Little Rock zoo was under construction so a lot of the exhibits were closed. We still had a wonderful time. This giraffe was so fun!! He wanted his picture taken!!

It was lunchtime for the tortoises. The boys loved watching these big guys eat!

This elephant is retired from her cirus career, but she still loves to perform! We loved watching her do some tricks.

Gabriel made a friend.....

Two beautiful bald eagles. This one was ignoring me. =)

March 16 week We had a very easy week. We mostly worked on our St. Patrick's crafts and lapbook (I'll share that later). On Tuesday the boys and I left for Kansas City to visit some family. We went to the Science City and at lunch at Fritz's on Friday. We discovered Kaleb is severely allergic to the dog in my bil's house so we spent Friday night in a hotel and headed home a few days early.

Little conductor hats at Fritz's.

Lunch at Fritz's where a train overhead served us our food. So cool!!

Kaleb playing a little golf.

Gabriel trying out one of the space center activities.

Gabriel and Kaleb playing in the tot area with some bubbles.

Nathan in one of the optical illusion rooms.

Gabriel loved making music!!

Trinity shamrocks. I love this little craft!! St. Patrick asked the Irish people if the shamrock was one leave or three, and a man replied, "it is both." St. Patrick's response was "and so it is with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." My boys totally got that!!!!

Snakes.

Shamrock wands.

Looking forward to a few *normal* weeks now! lol

Week Report

The last two weeks were very, very chaotic. We had so many things going on and not near enough time in the day.

Nathan is two lessons behind on math. We'll catch those up this weekend. I'm not worried too much. He has flown through these last two or three chapters.

He is several more lessons behind on language arts. We will work on getting caught back up next week.

Because things were so crazy here, we didn't start the ABC unit. We have, however, continued on with the human anatomy unit. We finished up all the books we checked out of the library this past weekend. Now we are going to look a little more in depth into each system of the body and work on a lapbook as we go.

I have to share this cute little funny about my 4 yr old son. Daddy has been working out of town here lately and came home Tuesday afternoon. All four boys were so excited to see him! After dinner, he sat down and both my 4 yr old and 2 yr old boys jumped up into his lap. As my 2 yr old was giving Daddy one of his super special loving but suffocating hugs, Daddy laughed a little and said "Gabriel! I can't breathe." Kaleb, 4 yr old, yelled at Gabriel "get off of Daddy!! Get off!!" Daddy told Kaleb that it was ok, but Kaleb said " no it isn't. We learned that if you have to breathe to live and I don't want you to die!" He was right. We had just talked about how the lungs work and why we need to breathe. Now we apparently need to teach him about figurative speech. lol

I'm also putting together a St Patrick's Day lapbook. There are so many cute ideas online! The boys will LOVE it!

I have also been working on next year's history schedule. I am almost finished with the first quarter. I finally decided on Mystery of History 1, SOTW 1, and Usborne's Encyclopedia of World History. I'm working on tying it all together with the bible, getting a list of readers for Nathan and read alouds, and putting together some little art projects to make it fun.

All suggestions for ancient history readers are more than welcome!!!

So that's our week. Next week will be boring again (I think I prefer boring...we accomplish so much more), and then the following week will be short. The boys and I are planning a trip up north to visit with some family. Hopefully we'll leave here on Thursday and come back on Monday.

March 26 is my baby boy's first birthday! Busy end of the month!! We need to get much accomplished next week.

Hope you all have a great weekend!!!

St Patrick's Day lapbook and other holiday activities.

Resources:
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks/st_patricks_day.htm

http://www.knowledgequestmaps.com/article11.htm


Irish blessing for the back of our lapbook:

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand

Book list: (there are many, many more books...these are the ones I found online that my library also has)

Crafts for St. Patrick's Day

Jeremy Bean's St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Hooray for St. Patrick's Day

A Leprechaun's St. Patrick's Day

Shamrocks, harps, and shillelaghs : the story of the St. Patrick's Day symbols

St. Patrick's Day: A Day of Irish Pride

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning

S. Patrick's Day by Gail Gibbons
The curse of Rafferty McGill / Dianne M. MacMillan

Jack and the leprechaun / by Ivan Robertson ; illustrated by Katy Bratun
The leprechaun's gold / by Pamela Duncan Edwards ; illustrated by Henry Cole

Leprechauns never lie / by Lorna & Lecia Balian

That's what leprechauns do / by Eve Bunting ; illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully

I will be reading St. Patrick of Ireland : a biography / Philip Freeman

****
Will list more later.

Making a note to myself. =)

I plan on using the CM memory system. I just need to find the time to put it all together. =) I actually had forgotten about it until I read a post on WTM forums.

Week review

Nathan-
math-competed another chapter (an easy one...mostly a review for him)

la-flying through English with one or two lessons a day, doing well with WW, the phonics workbook is a little tricky this week for him

science-doing a small unit study on human anatomy with the littles

reading-struggling a bit with his reading comp workbook a bit. He has been busy devouring The Charlie Bone books as well as reading several books on the American revolution.

history-see above. We will also start charting the different battles of the war soon.

geography-doing well. We have recently added state cards to the list. He simply has an index card to fill out about each state. I have an example card in the pile with all of the questions I want answered, five interesting facts that he can find himself, and on the back, a drawing of the state and one of the flag. Fun!!

religion-we stopped doing Seton's Religion 5. It was too much, I think. We have since found a gentler religion curriculum and are having better sucess with it. It is called We Believe. I think it is mostly used in a private school setting, but is working for us.

Kaleb-
He is plugging along with ETC. He really likes it!!! (so glad)
Anatomy mini unit study
Working with the morning board and morning folder every morning!! love it!
We will start a weekly letter unit study next week. I started a seperate blog for that. It is mostly for Gabriel as Kaleb already knows the alphabet, but there are a lot of fun crafty things that he will want to do too.

Gabriel-
Loving the morning board and folder too!! Last night he said that he couldn't wait to get up in the morning and do more school work!
He will also be participating in the letter unit study.

Good week!! My husband has out of town on business this week so its been a bit of a challenge for me. We accomplished a lot though!!

Breakfast board!!!

I LOVE this idea!!!! (Thank you, blog mama!!)

I haven't finished the 100 chart on the bottom left side or the weather part on the bottom right side. Also in that black spot on the bottom middle, I'm going to add some shapes for Gabriel.

That little skinny area on the right is for birthdays. I covered that area in contact paper so we can use dry erase markers. The dates are little post its.

The bagged cards in the middle are add/subtract fact cards. I velcro'ed the bags to the board. Actually I velcro'ed everything except the yellow straw holder in the middle and the calendar. That way I can change out anything that gets messed up. I also velcro-ed the clock to the page protector in case I decide to use it later in the day. The yellow weather chart below will eventually say at the top "Today's weather is..." with a box for them to stick a laminated picture of whatever the day's weather is. Then the month box will show the month's weather as we go so we can see how things progress.

The bag of cards here are phonics cards. The 100 chart at the bottom isn't finished yet either.

Human Body study

To involve my littles more, we do short two-three week studies on different things. Just something fun and engaging to get them to love learning as much as I do.

So far we've done mini-studies on ocean life and volcanoes. We are now starting on the human body. Our county library system is small but offers a HUGE variety of books on the human body, from the easy collection to the older children....something for everybody. I just wish they had more visual or hands-on materials. After reserving several books on the library's website, I started googling fun, interactive websites that teach about the human body.

Here are a few of what I found. Now I haven't had a chance to really look into any of these websites yet. I just marked them as faves until I have time to actually go through them.

http://www.alfy.com/teachers/teach/thematic_units/Human_Body/HB_1.asp
http://www.cellsalive.com/
http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/htbw_main_page.html
http://www.rainbowraccoons.com/index.html

We also use enchantedlearning.com for a lot of our printouts. It has been well worth the $20/year membership fee!!
I am now searching for some fun hand-on offline activities to complete our study.