Weekly Wrapup- Jan 24th- 28th

This week was wonderful in terms of learning. It was so activity-filled and I am exhausted because of it!
Monday- we reviewed our dry measurements and talked about abbreviations and brainstormed various abbreviations. Jakob also discovered patterns in skip counting so we spent a majority of the morning figuring these out for his times tables. He was so excited every time he found one. We reviewed our Biblical measurements of the shekel and used rice as our grain.

As a fun random knowledge time we looked at shekels, gallons, bushels, and pecks. That intro'd beautifully for me to teach the kids a favorite song my Grandma use to sing to me.

I love you
a bushel and a peck
a bushel and a peck
and a hug around the neck.

Tuesday- This was the day we worked on whole and parts. There was no real explanation there, just two kids, two bowls of flour and some measuring utensils. They discovered how the smaller measuring cups equaled the one cup by putting in the correct number of "fill-ups". Then Jakob worked to see how many Tablespoons and Teaspoons were each in a cup. Lots of fun, lots of mess, and a few blissful minutes where two siblings who have had a rough time getting along this week enjoyed each other's company. Afterwards we baked cookies according to the suggested recipe in our curriculum book. I'm sure that this recipe is illegal in some states because Oh my heavens it was soo good! I omitted the 1 and 1/2 BAGS of chocolate chips and halfed the recipe and still got 24 too delicious cookies. I had to stop myself eating the batter! (not good for my diet by any means) Thankfully my neighbor was home and we shared half and I made the kids scarf down the rest (they were *so* upset over that lol)


Wednesday- Hazel's Birthday! Jakob was very sweet and made her a birthday banner and hung it in the kitchen for her to wake up to. We went to the library to make use of their awesome museum pass program and snagged a pass to the Providence Children's Museum. This place was very awesome and the kids had a blast discovering it all. Unfortunately due to some poor planning on my part and an awfully early snowstorm, we had to leave just in time for a nice birthday tantrum to come on. We spent the rest of the evening just taking it easy as the snow prevented us from going to see Daddy at school that evening.


Thursday- For math we worked on dry conversions from cups to pounds and noted how different things can both be a cupful but weigh differently. Then in following our curriculum story we worked on figuring out how many lbs of bread we would need to make 30 loaves of bread to sell if each loaf needed 3 1/2 cups. It was fun to see Jakob use his own processes to figure out the problem. After that we actually baked bread and was surprised to discover that baked bread weighs considerably less than unbaked bread ;) Then it was an Afternoon of snow shoveling so that we could get to our evening activity at a local Science Store. Here they had a free workshop and set the kids out trying challenges using Citiblocs. Jakob was intense! I always worry about situations like this because failure is not pretty for him. But he pushed through and solved every challenge no matter how hard it was. I was very proud of him.


Friday- Today was suppose to have a lesson or two in it, but the lessons ended up being in responsibility. Meaning that my daily struggles with the kids to do their chores in the mornings came to a head today and we were all worn out from each other. It should not take 3 hours for a morning routine. Shouldn't but it did. I felt like I was running a rat race this morning trying to keep each kid on task and complete my tasks as well. Needless to say I have not been getting up in the mornings when I should have this week and boy has it showed. After the now famous "Hair-do Show down" Hazel said she wanted to go play in the snow and we all jumped at the opportunity to just do our own thing. The kids played and I knitted. And that's it. Hubby is home now so I'm off to enjoy what little time I get with him this weekend before he's off to school again. Happy weekend!