Week 8

Nathan finished up L for Leaf this week and talked about how disappointing it is that we weren't going in order with the letters.  Ha ha!  He was relieved to move to the letter A next.  :)

Picking leaves at the arboretum:

Painting leaves in a new way!  Shaving cream and paint mixed up to press leaf picture onto. 

This week we had prizes!!  Everyone filled their sticker charts and received a fun prize!

Hunter was lucky enough to get 2 prizes this week because he finished Level 1 of Barton Reading.  The teacher that trains me really stresses rewards and positivity so I got him a prize!  Technically, he's not supposed to read unless he wants to so this book was a weird choice but it's more of a guide to the new Goosebumps movie.

We had a rare Friday with no appointments so we took the morning to shop and have lunch out.

We ended our History lesson this week by making butter!  We served it with supper and it tasted just fine!  :)

We also had a field trip this week so that was fun!  

Week 7

 Nathan finished up his moon unit by making a space helmet and pretending to walk on the moon.  

We then started his leaf unit.  The 'l' sound is a hard one for him so he hates this unit so far.  Ha!  I think he'll like it more as we go into it.  He drew an apple tree in his book and then we did some leaf collecting on our field trip (pics below).

Finishing up our skeleton unit in science:

Samuel drew this lovely picture of the 2 of us:

Hunter and I tried out our new game, Tenzi:

Lily keeps pretty busy sewing and crafting in her room:

On Saturday, we headed out for a field trip.  We hopped out of the van for a quick picture at the strawberry:

A park was having it's annual heritage days so we stopped in to see what life was like for the pioneers:

Another quick photo at the pink elephant:

This pic just cracks me up.  This was our last picture before we were headed home!

The Effigy Mound National Park was our intended stop and it was pretty busy!  I didn't walk the whole way because I am fighting a cold/cough and found the hike to hurt my chest a bit.  :(

The park had a neat museum area to walk through:

This is Nathan's idea of enjoying nature--he's not so much into the hike part:

Pretty trees!

Great view of the Mississippi River!

And headed back, this was the quiet van:

We collected just a couple leaves for kindergarten and enjoyed driving into a different state for lunch, just for fun.  We went to an arboretum on Sunday to collect even more leaves so we are ready for a new week!

Week 6

This past week of school was pretty busy.  I tried to schedule a lot of work bc we have been and will continue to be so busy!!  

Nathan continued his moon unit.  This was an activity on the moon's surface:

And this was the moon cake.  We made a large, medium, and small crater and filled them with different ingredients.  The vinegar/baking soda mix was a fun bubbly surprise.  :)

He also made a mobile with the sun on one side and moon on the other:

The big kids checked out chicken bones in science.  My counter has a couple jars of chicken bones that we are experimenting on.  :)

Samuel and Hunter started the Barton reading program.  So far, I'm loving it.  Hunter has done really well and I think the home visit will go great.  Samuel has mainly been positive about it but he was getting pretty frustrated one day so I'll be slowing it down and taking longer to go over sounds. Our Barton instructor tells us that it's not about our child understanding our teaching, it's us understanding how to teach it so the child understands.   

We did take half a day to see a movie!!  Samuel brought his zombie to the theater to 

enjoy the movie, too.