Weekly Wrap-up

Well, we've survived another week! (That's good since we are in survival mode.) It was an unusual week being as I had to work in the middle of it!  I worked Wednesday and Thursday from 7p-7a (ish).  Hubby came home early Wed and took off Thursday to be available to take kids to gymnastics and the summer movie and to make sure they don't burn down the house!  It was still a pretty productive week though!

Accomplishments!!!!
We finally, finally finished our Olympic lapbooks! I'm not sure what we did wrong, but all of us have decided we hate lapbooks! LOL!  Crazy K said it best, it's so messy, and unorganized, and it takes forever!  I think if I were to do it over, I would do it differently.

Because each of them cut at different rates, we've been just cutting, cutting, cutting... I saved all the gluing for the final day, which turned out to be a mess.  IF, and that's a big IF, we do it again, we'll make the actual book first, then cut and glue after each lesson (or during).  Perhaps that would help.  We've done lapbooks before, but this was the first time we've had all 4 kiddos doing them.  They turned out pretty good, but we're all glad they're over! 

In addition to that accomplishment, my wonderful Hubby hung the monkey pictures for me!  I was surprised to come home to them hanging in the bathroom!  Yeah!

In School
School did happen this week, though it was a short week, with light days.  Bean Boy finished his fractions book from Life of Fred last week, and has started on decimals this week.  He finished the fractions book in about 2 months!  He is still loving it!

Grommy came and worked with the kids again this week.  She and the kids said she worked them pretty hard!  Yeah Grommy!!!  We will be filming our news production this weekend and rehearsing on Friday, so hopefully we can get that out of the way.  I will try to post that, though I've not had much luck posting videos... here's another opportunity to practice, right?

Miscellaneous
This weekend my cousin is getting married!  It will be exciting.  My husband and I eloped 12.5 years ago, and had an extremely small wedding the next day.  (That's a funny story....for another time!) I haven't been to a wedding since we first got married!  Makes my thoughts linger to the time when things were new and exciting and we had the whole world at our feet.... and it makes me glad to be here, where we are friends as well as lovers, where we trust each other more and love each other more; where we've learned that even when we don't "feel it" we can "love" each other in an active way... the way God tells us to.  I'm so glad that we've come through hard times, rejoiced in good times, watched God provide during the worst times, and still are committed to one another.  Every day in our lives with each other and God as the Captain has been a wild adventure! 

Check out Kris at

 

Weekly Wrap-up

This week has been amazing... a few field trips, a little school, some time in the kitchen, and wonderful fun together, as well as a nice surprise... I can't believe I'm already to the end of the week, and about ready to head back to work! It will probably be easiest if I go day by day for this wrap-up.  

Monday
Monday was a fantastic day.  I was just getting over my 24 hour "death bug" and might have overdone it, but it was wonderful!  Swim team is over. . . that means no more leaving by 0730 every morning!!! Woohoo!  So, back to my wonderful routine! Mommy is so happy!!!  However, we didn't have school on Monday.  Just a field trip.  Baby T spent most of the day with some friends, while Crazy K, Bean Boy, and Little Bit and I went to this great place called Yes You Canvas!  They painted these amazing monkeys that I'm going to hang on my bathroom wall!  *I got the hooks, and then discovered I don't have the right nails! Geesh!  I'll post a picture of the completed monkeys after I hang them.

And, it all started from just one yellow circle! The instructor was great!  Step by step he led each student through and they all made fabulous monkeys! 

 

After that, we went to visit Hubby at his work/internship.  We were able to have lunch together.  What a treat for us all. Then it was back to get Baby T, home for a short siesta, and then the cooking commenced...

I organize a casserole swap where each participant makes a casserole for all of the other participants.  So, this time we had 7 people sign-up... I made 7 tonight, 1 for myself and 6 for the other families...all the same casserole.  The girls had fun helping in the kitchen... Yummy Chicken Enchiladas from Skinny Taste!

One of 3 pots of chicken I made to go in our 6 casseroles... fortunately I had some left over I was able to freeze.

 The girls were so helpful all doing whatever was asked of them, and offering to do even more! I'm so blessed!

 Well...they're all piled in our deep freeze waiting to be exchanged now.  It has been invaluable to know that once a week I can pull something out of the freezer and dinner is ready!!!

 Oh... and, Hubby the Hero even helped clean up the mess! And what a mess it was!

Tuesday

Tuesday was just a regular old school day! I'm so thankful that Bean Boy had the opportunity to be on swim team, but even more thankful that it is over, and I have my mornings back.  We spent the morning doing chores and school, and then the afternoon was spent at the gym while the girls tumbled and jumped and walked on their hands!  Nothing special to report except that routine makes me happy!

1st grade math is fun!

Wednesday

Wednesday was some more routine, with a twist.  I had bought some clipboards for the girls and myself to keep our daily "list" on.  This year I started to use Scholaric for keeping up with our lesson plans and Bean Boy is starting to get some grades that Scholaric will keep up with too.  So, I print our lists from Scholaric and put it on the clipboards...anyway- all this to say that I got to spend some time using my creativity to color and decorate the clipboards with Crazy K.  It was something I wouldn't normally do, and was a ton of fun and very relaxing.  As time started to get by, we started to sing our memory verses and hymns while we were coloring! Then onto Bible and so forth.

Baby T saying her memory verse with hand motions!

Wednesday is also a gymnastics day, so I dropped the older two off at the tutor and headed to the gym.  On the way, I got a phone call from a friend who was ill and said she couldn't go to the painting class she had signed up for at Yes You Canvas... she wanted to know if I wanted to take her spot.  I wasn't sure about this.  I did want to, and the picture they were painting was one I had wanted to do, but it was just outside of my comfort zone.  When I talked to Hubby about it, he actually pretty much told me to go.... so I did.  And, I'm so glad that I did!  I had a good time, though I found some parts unnerving and a little stressful, I really like my painting.  What do you think? 

Thursday

My MIL comes once a week to play, I mean school the kids.  ;) She does a lot of the stuff I don't like to work on... flashcards, drills, rote memory type stuff. Usually she comes while I'm sleeping or going to appointments or such, but today I didn't have any of that, so I cleaned! It was fabulous. I cleaned out Baby T's drawers, cleaned the bathroom, cleaned the kitchen (which was a nightmare!) and more!  Then I took a shower.  The kids and I said goodbye to Grommy and headed out to lunch and bowling.  We had a great time bowling with our friends (despite several break downs of the ball return machine!).

After bowling, we returned home to start on dinner...then the ladies came to swap our casseroles... 6 new yummy casseroles in the freezer.  I have one free pass for the next 6 weeks!!! Yippeee!

Friday-

I'm writing this ahead of time, but the plan is to school, have lunch with my mom, and then I go to work...nothing special.  Another week will have gone by, and we will not have finished our lapbooks before the start of the Olympics! :( BUT, we will finish them next week! Then onto our government study, hopefully.

Favorite Part of the Week

I've noticed a spirit of ungratefulness in my kids lately.  And, I must confess, I've had a spirit of dis-contentedness.  So, last week I asked the kids to list 5 things they were grateful for.  They were not allowed to say people, unless it was a specific thing about that person or something they had done. We continued the list each day, and they were not allowed to repeat anything.  This starts to get hard after several days.  I'll share a couple of things from each kiddo here and probably make a whole new post on our Thankfulness Journals.  It is interesting to see the progression from day 1 to day 5...

Crazy K
Day 1:  House, food, God, Peace, Love
Day 2:  Happiness, animals, Bible, bed, stuffed animals
Day 3:  Ms. Kristy keeping me this summer, my family is healthy
Day 4:  Little Bit saying good job on Baby T's clipboard, quiet time with God
Day 5:  Grommy doing school with us

Bean Boy
Day 1:  math, rain, monopoly, pets, Josh cuz he is funny (Bean Boy's writing cracks me up!)
Day 2:  Bible, God, exercise, scientists, Life of Fred
Day 3:  Ozzie (our dog), physics... and I just caught that he re-listed Bible.... I guess I can't complain
Day 4:  Mom cuz she is my teacher, Dad cuz he is my math teacher
Day 5:  water, my brain, clothes

Little Bit
Day 1:  movies, Mellow Mushroom, shelter, clothes, toys
Day 2:  furniture, trees
Day 3:  going camping with my family, money for our family
Day 4:  Mommy doing my clipboard, Bean Boy being nice to me
Day 5:  ice cream, Jesus

Baby T
Day 1:  family and friends, God dying on the cross for us, house butterflies and rainbows, toys
Day 2:  chickens (our chickens are hers), Little Bit making breakfast, gymnastics
Day 3:  God, Crazy K helping with chores, flowers
Day 4:  Crazy K and Mommy making my clipboard nice, sunset, thankful that we sing our memory verses

This proves that we have so much in our every day lives to be thankful for.  Many of these things are things others don't have... sadly including Jesus!  We are so very, very blessed.  What a lesson I'm learning as I keep a journal too!  It has been a great way to start our Bible study.

Our Bible Time... Thank you Jesus!

 I'm linking up with Kris again at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.  Have a great weekend and week

Olympics

I'm so very excited that there are 2 special events going on this year that I get to teach my chilies about.... Can you guess?  Of course, it's the 2012 Olympics, and the Presidential Election.  We are going to spend the next week or so studying the Olympics with the help of several resources.  If you haven't tried out Homeschoolshare, they are the best place to go for all things lapbooking!  And, they're FREE!!! We used their templates as well as a study guide I got from CurrClick.  Hopefully by the end of the study that each kiddo will have an amazing lapbook that they can share with others!

We started yesterday (ok...Monday... been working on this for a while)!  It was so wonderful to have all the kids (including my God-daughter) around the table cutting away while I read to them about the history of the Olympics.  I'm learning so much too!  We will study the history, the timeline, the different emblems, logos, prizes, and so much more.  Then, we are going to highlight certain competitors that I think will inspire the kiddos.  My son started on swim team this year.  We had fun watching the swimming trials and for the first time he really got into competition, and I heard him cheer on Michael Phelps.  That was so fun- and man, the competition between Phelps and Lochte is making for a very interesting competition.  And, of course, my sweet gymnasts were allowed to stay up VERY late to watch the gymnastic trials.  The whole time Baby T was saying, "I'm going to do that one day!"

I think this will be such a fun, fun study, and a break from our normal... nice to do since we always school through the summer!  I would love to see link-ups to what you guys are doing for Olympic study, or election study, or lapbooking....


Organization
So- I'm also wondering how you guys go about doing your lapbooks.  I like to have them do all the cutting while I'm talking... a little each day goes a long way.  This year (we usually do 1 big one/year) I punched holes in all the papers and gave each kid their own 3-ringed binder.  Then, per the suggestion of the study guide we had, we used duct tape at the bottom of a ziplock bag, and used that bag to hold the smaller cutouts, glue, and small scissors.  This has been the best organization of all the years.  I have tried large ziplock bags to hold it all, folders, crates, etc., but the 3-ringed binder really seems to make a difference.  For some reason, they can clean it up easier, and without complaining....maybe too it is just because they are older... who knows!

Finished Product
I promise to post pictures of our finished products when they are done....hopefully we will start gluing next week!