Weekly Wrapup- Sept 13- 17th

Wow this week went by super quick and I didn't think I had so much to show for it, but apparently I did. Warning!! Picture overload!!!

One of Jakob's most favorite things to do is help in the kitchen and since I refuse to buy cereal for breakfast, (that's another story) the kids generally get their cooking in with breakfast. Today we made zucchini muffins... Finger lickin' good!
(we use ground flax seed in place of egg and applesauce instead of oil so it makes the batter totally safe)

In our Bible lessons this week. I had the kids cut out their memory verse and tape the words end to end as a fun activity. I snagged that idea from one of my favorite blogs and her section called Raising Rockstars
(this woman is great I tell ya!)

We did more watercolors this week working with yellow and red for orange and to make "fire". Jakob made some really awesome designs and was much more comfortable with the paint this week. This one is mine, I'm not sure what happened to all my pictures of his.

My mind was completely put at ease this week when this HUGE box arrived from Mike's Aunt in Wyoming. She sent both kids TONS of winter wear!
While Hazel loved playing in the box, she has been beside herself the past couple of days with her vast wardrobe choices. YAY!!

Our reading lessons this week focused on ea, ei, ey, and eigh sounds. I find it very important to work on phonics with Jakob especially because of his speech delays. I made up a little categorizing game for him out of flash cards. He matched the word to the sounds it made. Although he did very well with this we will work more in this area to familiarize him with sounds that he may not readily hear when he speaks and spells.

One of my biggest goals is to teach my children how to find information for themselves. I think Dictionary work is very overlooked in schools today and really want my kids to know how to find things. Jakob looked up all his vocab words this week and read their definitions. I chose not to have him write them down because this is a newer skill for him.

The preschool and younger age meetup group that we belong to went apple picking this week and we joined them in the fun. I am so grateful for these ladies as they have scheduled lots of fun little trips to the farms over the next few weeks. Makes my life a lot easier to have events that both kids can truly enjoy.

This has been Hazel's general attitude of late. Fun huh?

I think this apple officially made the 14th pound of apples that were picked that day. Oh but the apple butter that cooked up in my crock pot is ooooo sooo yummy.

This isn't a great picture of the sign but it says "Native" butter and sugar and sweet corn. Locally grown or produced food here is called "native". Oh the giggles I have had over these little signs on the side of the road. ;)

Jakob was thrilled that the watermelon that we got from the farmer's market was yellow inside and set about saving seeds to plant next year.

As an intro to his inventions we started building one of his erector sets this week. I was pleasantly surprised at how well he read the directions and how little coaching I had to do with him on trying again when we made mistakes. He has since put almost all of it together himself!

We are beginning a little study on life cycles. And while other schools are posting their pictures of the beautiful butterflies and ladybugs they are hatching. I earn my "Cool-Mom" badge this week by taking my kids into PetCo and buying them some Meal worms!

The experiment is really cool for the kids because they all know what the caterpillar turns into, they know what the tadpole turns into, but we have never raised a beetle! I found the experiment here.

Now there's a shot a mother can be proud of! :)
I'm linking up this week with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Check her out, she's pretty cool too! Click on her button below.

Weekly Wrapup - Sept 6-10

This week's Bible lessons focused on various stories throughout the Bible where God made and kept his promises. Of Course we spent a lot of time on Noah.
We sang "Who built the ark?" A LOT.
We listened to Jungle Jam and Friends "Nermal and the Ark"
We floated around the kitchen.

But the favorite activity of the day was when I broke out the watercolors and the paper to paint a rainbow. And only gave them primary colors. Ooooh! Aaaah!
You can ROYGBIV your kids all day long but nothing compares to them being able to create the effects on their own. It was beautiful! Jakob has since requested that we paint with the watercolors on a more regular basis.

I must say though that working with watercolors did come with its own frustrations. Neither the kids or I had ever worked with then on watercolor paper before and Jakob grew increasingly agitated that the color didn't stay where he wanted it to but chose to run and bleed together. Patience was not our virtue that day. And although he wasn't totally pleased with his work I think they are beautiful. (his are the top 2)

Afterwards the kids went outside to experiment some more with mixing colors.

And then came inside to experiment with the recycling bins :)

We had a birthday party to attend this weekend and I have been trying to focus on hand (and heart) made gifts for everyone for budgeting purposes and to learn the value of doing your very best. Since our birthday friend is very much in to Pirates we decided to make him a special shirt using a batik process. (for tutorial go here)

We watered down the paint and sprayed it for our special effects.

Of course since this was so much fun Jakob made one for himself to wear as well.

Apparently this looked like loads of fun because a Praying Mantis decided to chill at our window for a while (following 3 pictures taken by Jakob)

This was a little window art that we did just for fun... and mom's sanity. *grin*

Love

I have not been formally doing much with Hazel at this point. Her cubbies seem to be more of a distraction to myself and Jakob than an entertaining aspect while I work with him. I have some ideas in the works to help that along but haven't put them in place yet. Right now we are just clinging to what does actually work and trying to be open to personal interests in the meantime.

She did however choose 2 of her Tot Books that we had completed a few months ago. I found them at this site.

Lots of exploring going on and tons of "boring" formal stuff as well. We are still reading The Box Car Children, and our Reading program of choice is Progressive Phonics.
We went to the zoo but again I have no photos. My friend Keli is the photographer and I am the nerd who reads all the signs. Together we make a pretty good team but doesn't help me out much when I'm blogging. Maybe I can get her to teach me a thing or two.

Well that's our week in a very small nutshell. Off for more adventure!!

Confessions... I'm fat!

LOL....
No, seriously!
Sometimes being a mom and a wife (I won't even limit this to military) and a full time student and an occasional basket-case causes you to forget to take care of something...
YOUR HEALTH!!!
I have been on a weight rollercoaster now for about 5 years. I have never really "liked" my body per se' but the past 5 years have been harsh.
I really do love to work out... with certain conditions. It has to be the same time everyday and totally uninterrupted and NO RUNNING EVER!!!
I'm sure you can easily spot where my hangups are.
My friend in S Florida has been running for oh about 2 years now that I know of and she looks great. I will be totally honest here and say I have rolled my eyes many of times at how she claims that running is her sanity. I mean seriously? Have you ever seen a runner smile while running? Ever?
I love you Ang I truly do :-)
A strange twist of fate had us purchasing a treadmill before we left, I gave it a go a couple of times but really this was for Mike. He HAS to run for his PT tests, so this would help him be at home for his workouts instead of leaving me home with the kids for two more hours (cause you know when the guys go workout its never quick)
So.. here we are in Rhode Island my tail is ever widening and I am NOT happy about it. So reluctantly VERY reluctantly I hop on the treadmill and give it a go. Ok there I did it. My knee hurts, are you happy? I'm a bit of an all or nothing type of person.
Then I went to the library and as I was trying to find a knitting book I stumbled across a self help meditation book. (Turns out I was in the wrong section....or was I)
I can't remember the name of the book nor did I read the entire thing, but one part really stuck out to me. It said to ask yourself everyday...
"What am I going to do today to better myself and my health?"
and then at the end of the day,
"What did I do today to better myself and my health?"

You know what? I ran 10 miles this week! 2 miles everyday at different times of the day with my kids sitting right there. I didn't finish in great times, right now I'm averaging a 15 1/2 min mile but I'm doing it. You see I'm running to Boston, and once I run those 38 miles on the treadmill it takes to get to Boston, then I get to treat myself to a little train ride SANS KIDS. Just me and my knitting and a day of walking around. Sweet huh? I thought so. Mike thought it was a good idea too but couldn't help but jibe me a little with,
"So you just felt like running?" In his best Gump voice ever.
LOL So yeah I just felt like running and here's a special little video I found in tribute to my new found sanity. Please enjoy....

Weekly Wrapup Aug 30-Sept 3

This week we desperately tried to stay on "schedule", but just as our previous homeschooling semester had proved we are leaning a bit away from the lesson plans I have worked so hard on and more towards what the kids are showing me that they want to do and learn. This week showed me that I truly do need to allow this to happen more often.

Using the magnifying glass to help each other with an I Spy book. Jakob read, and Hazel would find (mostly). Daddy even got in on the fun!
We are reading "The Boxcar Children" and this week's discussion led us to how the children made beds out of pine needles. So we went outside to see how comfy that might be.
We filled a pillowcase with leaves that are ALREADY falling in our yard.

Jakob claimed the pillow was comfy and great for scratching your back (I'm not sure that would be my definition of comfy).
Hazel just like posing for the pictures and then talking to the people walking up and down our street.

We continued talking about Egypt and how hot it was there and so they would make cool dishes to eat. We made an "Egyptian Day Salad", which was mostly cucumbers and yogurt and decided that we will pass on any future "Day Salad" adventures.
We checked on the Mummy....
Hazel was the "hands on" person this week. I thought I had totally lost Jakob as he wasn't right there at the "mummy" but then I turned around an saw this....
He was recording all the information as Hazel and I were discussing it. This is HUGE as this child resists writing of any kind (other than his Sonic movie script) and more often than not the death nail to any activity would be for me to ask him to write something down. So.. YAY!!

My favorite part of the week was this.....
I taught Jakob how to play GNU this week and he REALLY liked it. Since this is a spelling game I figured this would be a one on one game for he and I, but here he has found a way to include his sister.
He brainstormed first some of the words they should try to make and wrote them on the board for Hazel to see and a reminder to him as to what letters to look for. Wonderful!