Week 10

Nathan learned about 'H for Halloween' this week!  We had a lot of fun with horses, hands and hearts, too.  Hunter volunteered to be his show-and-tell since his name starts with 'H'.  :)  The sensory bin:

I did not at all teach Nathan to spell or write his name but he picked it up.  He's showing off here:

We made a spider's web for our Halloween-themed fun.  He counted to 20 while finding the spiders.

 Samuel and I had some fun this week.  I have been spending time with him, getting him confident in spelling and writing his name.  We've done a lot of activities on this.  I have heard him tell his cousin that he knows how to spell/write his name and he showed Papa PJ when he came over.  He's pretty proud and I'm glad I took some time off of regularly-scheduled-items to grow his confidence in this.  Anyway, here is Samuel smashing sight word pumpkins.  :)  This made a HUGE mess but it was too cold to do it outside.  He loved it! (It's printed pumpkins sitting on a pile of shaving cream.)

Hunter and Lily did some fun English activities to review parts of speech.  This game helped them  review proper and common nouns

In Konos, we studied ears/music/sound this week.  We brought the tent inside to be our ear and added construction paper for wax/hair, a bucket for the eardrum, a hammer for the hammer, a drumstick for the anvil, a triangle for the stirrup, a bottle with water for the cochlear and then there was yarn for nerves leading to a pillow (the brain).  We walked through the parts over and over but I'm not sure if it stuck or not.  :)

I discovered the joy of watching videos in school.  Ha!  We watched some orchestra-themed videos and a video on Helen Keller this week.  

We had Halloween-themed morning activities this week and this one was a hit because I had not called the kids to the table yet but there 2 were, getting started without me.  :)

Hunter and Lily started a new multiplication game on my tablet and this was a hit!

Also this week, they helped me chop about 48 peanut butter cups for a cheesecake.  So glad they helped unwrap all those candies!

We took Friday off of school to enjoy Halloween.  It was our 1st vacation day from school!  Halloween was a success this year--way too much candy in my kitchen now.  :)

Here are the kids with their pumpkins--Brian helped clean and carve while I was out one night.

The finished projects:

This year's costumes:  

Nathan is Iron Patriot

Lily is Maleficent

Samuel is a phantom

Hunter is The Thing

Our trick-or-treat group!

Week 9

Nathan focused on the letter 'L' this week.  We went on a leaf walk, counted ladybug spots and made a lizard craft,.  Of course, there was the leaf-sensory bin.  He didn't seem as into this one, though.

Samuel was excited to make his 100-guy.  We focused on place value again this week and I think he grasped it pretty well.  We will finish up on Monday and then move back to his regular math book.

Hunter finished his book so he got to fill out his bookworm journal. 

We started our unit on being attentive.  We worked on road signs, hidden pictures and played Memory to introduce this topic.  

Lily started her next class at the homeschool building.  She is doing an art class focusing on paper basket weaving.  She said it was hard!

The boys and I worked at keeping busy for an hour but it was really cold and dreary this day.  I ended up giving them my phone to watch a movie on for half the time.  :)

We had a fun field trip the pumpkin farm this week!!  It was a gorgeous day and we had tons of fun!!

This is Brian and Nathan coming out of "The Dread Shed".  Nathan HATED it and you can see Brian was scared coming out.  Ha ha!  The big kids had a great reaction, too, but the railing was in the way of the picture.  Nathan and I played on the giant tires while the rest of them went back through it again.  :)

A successful trip!

Week 8

Nathan learned about the letter 'P' this week.  We played with play dough:

We made patterns, but he only wanted to use the green bears.

And, we popped popcorn and read some popcorn-themed books.  Pretty tough stuff!  :)

Samuel and I did a little different math this week.  We focused on place value and I think the change was good.  He made a "ones place" and a "tens place" guy, which was a HUGE success with him.

We then practiced place value using different methods all week.  I downloaded quite a few sets of activities from Teachers Pay Teachers for this and that worked out really well.

For our Konos work, we studied the solar system for our last week of focusing on orderliness.  We had a lot of fun using a unit study from Teachers Pay Teachers again.  We put planets in order:

Painted the moon:

And played memory:

Hunter got 1 day off of school this week because he had to have 2 teeth removed.  He's in high spirits for this picture, showing off his laughing gas mask:

But it was a different story when he got home.  Thankfully, the visitors, the presents and the medicine made his day better.

We spent our "recess" grocery shopping on Friday.  We stopped for a quick snack in Target--half a personal pan pizza and a free cookie from the bakery. :)  It was a great end to the week.

Next week is going to be busy but I have a few different things planned to really focus in on some topics the kids are struggling with.  We'll see how that goes!

Week 7

Nathan learned about the letter 'O' this week.  We made an octopus for his letter book:

He had an ocean sensory bin, a hit with all 4 kids!

And he made an ocean sensory bottle:

In our Konos work, we talked about the orderliness of seasons/months.  Each day we took a new season until Friday, which was a hop-to-the-season review game.  

Monday was winter so we made some snowflakes and some really cute gingerbread men:

For snack, we enjoyed hot cocoa:

Tuesday was spring so they made kites:

And painted watercolor scenes from spring:

Wednesday was summer.  We made 4th of July flags and enjoyed icy cold lemonade:

Thursday was fall so we shared what were thankful for and them made pumpkin faces.  You can see our real pumpkins in the background--that's actually for Halloween.  We also made a pumpkin cake for snack this day.

In other big news this week, we finished our 1st read aloud.  They had a chance to write or draw a picture about the book.  We had a lot of pictures of bank robberies and poor Aunt Ruth, who was killed early on in the book.  It was a good Western, for sure.  Ha!  We started our new read aloud this week, which is Witches by Roald Dahl.

Non-school-related pictures....  Nathan is a huge helper in the kitchen and really into helping bake, cook, mix, whatever!  He helped me make cinnamon rolls for supper last week:

We went to my parents' house for lunch one day this week and the kids enjoyed raking and jumping in the leaves.  We don't have that many leaves in our own yard so it's a treat for them!

And, Nathan was passed out in the cat bed one evening this week.  It's tough playing hard all day. 

Week 6

Nathan learned about 'F' this week! He is so quick to build the letter when I just set the pieces on the table--he beats me to it every week!

He had a frog sensory bin this week, complete with a little green pond.  This is always a hit for the other kids, too.  

Tweezing fish into fishbowls:

We read The Foot Book and traced Nathan's feet to put down and jump to.  This is blurry but a great action shot:

Notice Samuel's lack of glasses--he had a rough week with them.  We compromised this day and I let him take them off for the last half of our sentence game.  

We read about Dwight Moody this week and every time I said "YMCA", the twins did the actions.  Ha!  At least I know they are listening.  If you are wondering, Samuel is in the computer chair close by but not in the picture.  

In Konos this week, we learned about rocks.  We are shaking a jar full of stones, dirt, sand and water to show the sediment layers.

On Friday this week, we broke geodes to see the crystals inside.  This was a huge success!  We got all kinds of crystals and the kids loved it!!

The twins' science class ended this week so we have a couple weeks off from outside classes.  Time is really going fast so far!!