Weekly Wrapup- Schooling, Packing, and House showings Oh My!

This week I am very grateful for a lighter schedule.
Between trying to keep the house clean for showings, staying with my "2 box a day" packing schedule, and managing the intake of Easter candy (by all members of this family) I was very glad when I reviewed my lesson plans for the week and saw that we were working on telling time.
This was one of the areas Jakob had already learned during his traditional school days so there wasn't much to learn. We focused on honing his knowledge of different terms related to telling time such as "Quarter till and after" and "Half past".
This was a bit tricky for him but once we got the clock manipulative out then he saw more clearly how it all works.
Because this was a relatively simple idea for him I also started on next week's project which was making Times Table Clocks.

This was great fun for the both of us, and he was excited I let him use the laminating machine to preserve them. We revisited the patterns we found in the different tables and I passed on my Mom's little treasure of "12x12 is 144 EWW GROSS!"(a gross being 12 dozen of something) We had fun saying that over and over again.
Good Times.
Our Morning Walks this week have proven lovely as each day we were supposed to have rain but we were able to avoid it.

The kids received bug catchers in their Easter Baskets, so the fun this week was Bug Hunting. Hazel is now obsessed with ants. Jakob is still digging for worms where ever he can and LOVES to gross his Mommy out with HUGE wigglers. Hey I might have them in the house but they are in a container and have a job to do. And I don't have to look at them.

Jakob is doing much better with his cursive and no longer needs the prompt sheet for lowercase letters. I have been having him write words from previous spelling lists and he has been doing a fabulous job. We have been doing all of our writing on chalkboards but I think soon we will begin to move our writing to paper to see how he does. Sometimes lined paper is rougher on his handwriting than just blank so we will start with blank and then occasionally work with lined. To me it sounds totally weird but looking at his writing you can definitely tell a difference so we will go with it.

Friday of last week a very special package came in the mail. My mom sent rain boots for Hazel (which she has rarely taken off since) and they both received a very special gift of harmonicas from their Uncle CaLeb. My brother is a FAB musician and loves that his nephew and niece hang on his every word (and note). I wasn't exactly thrilled at 6am on Saturday morning when the harmonicas started what was to be their 3 hour song, but now that Jakob has had a bit of time with them, he's turning out to be pretty good. I found some online music and lessons and we have been playing around with them each evening before bed.

Jakob is really into reading mystery books right now. He's loving the Boxcar Children Mysteries, A-Z Mysteries, and the Calendar Mysteries. We are still reading the Guardians of GaHoole series aloud (only nine more to go!), and he reads everyday to Hazel while I brush her hair. She has discovered that she LOVES the Fancy Nancy books and has us read them so much she can all but repeat them. She likes to tell you that one word is a fancy word for another... a LOT.

We are all counting down until our official last day of "school". Two more weeks and we will be done with lessons for a while. While we will be learning life lessons during the move, I'm not going to stress myself out over school while we settle in. I have a few plans for the Summer, but I will share those later next week.

Weekly Wrapup- The Week Before Easter

Also Known as the "Week of the Egg"

This week would normally be Spring Break for us, but as we are cutting off two full weeks of school for moving, we needed to keep working.
Great thing is, this was a very light week where we discussed the passing of days in the form of a grain of a day.
We looked at the different grains each day before they were ground (or not in the case of the wheat) and experienced the difference in their tastes and textures in our dishes.
It was really neat as I had not tried some of these grains and those we had eaten before we looked for a new spin on how to make them ie: we had rice pudding for the first time.

We also read the story of Passover and talked about its meaning. I'm not very versed in the whole tradition, so we basically read the story of Moses and left it at that. Next year though, there will be a Seder. I'm excited!
In keeping with our discussions of time and specifically the lunar cycle, we briefly discussed how certain cultures utilize the lunar cycle to determine their months and therefore determine their ceremonies which of course is why certain holidays we celebrate fall slightly different each year.
The rest of the week we spent decorating eggs in various forms from our natural dyes leftover from a previous lesson (they were a bit old so only onion worked), painting with watercolor, dotting them with melted crayon, and finally the tried and true hard boiled food coloring and vinegar method.
Fun times for all.

I love how this egg looks like a sunset


Daddy was home for a couple of days for me to head to the Dr and for a day off to recoup, Friday's lunchtime came around and I realized I did not have anything planned. Opps! So we got out the flour and made little cutout dough shapes and Daddy whipped up a yummy surprise of Gravy! MMMM. We haven't had much Southern Comfort food since moving up here, so its nice every once in a while to just "sink into your roots" with a fork and knife.
The final "egg" we made were in the form of beeswax. Jakob and I made egg candles! They were soo beautiful! And there are few things in this earth that smell better than beeswax. Oh its Heavenly!
That was our "school week" how was yours?

Weekly Wrapup- April 11-15

Whoa! Another week gone just like that!
We had more plain ole' ordinary homeschool fun this week, but this time I did manage to take a few shots.
Our theme this week was Mud.
Although a Mud theme is quite common in New England, I for one have never really "celebrated" it.
Up here though, you just have to well because.... its everywhere!
Once all that snow and ice melts, that is all that survives. And you are so happy to be in fresh air that doesn't slice you throat as you breathe in you just gotta go play in the mud.
No, there's no way to keep it out of the house either.
I'm starting to see the reason Crocs and Rubber galoshes were invented.

So, mud.
We painted our papermache' birds nest with mud colored paint, dug for worms, made Mud Pie, and gave each other Mud Facials.
We had a mud themed poem, read books about mud and mopped up more mud than you can ever imagine.
Of course the house was a wreck by the end of the week, which is precisely when the property manager called to say he wanted to show our house... in five hours. Opps! Thank goodness for a sunny day in which I could throw my kids outside in is all I have to say.



The day we made mud pie was soo much fun. Jakob has really been putting an effort in to try new and different foods as he is learning that he has been missing out on some tastes because of his pickiness. Well when he saw Mud Pie on the Board for our baking activity he was truly torn.
Mom! Are we really eating mud?
What does it say son?
Mud Pie
Well what kind of pie do you think it is?
*sigh* Mud.
He almost lost it when I gave him a bowl and two spoons and told him to dig up a bowl of dirt for the pie.
Of course we didn't eat dirt.
Its a really unhealthy snack of chocolate cookies, chocolate pudding, and gummy worms for fun. YUMMY!

This week we were able to go out almost every morning for a walk and explore. We had fun identifying the flowers and plants in bloom and mentally noting the ones we didn't know to look up later. I really need to get us a good nature guide for this.
The kids also took time each morning to listen and watch the birds as they are all a flutter. We saw a fight between a couple of males for a female which was really awesome!

Math this week was mostly a review about time and the various ways in which we measure time. We talked about sun dials, the lunar cycle, the Months, and how and why the stars rotate by seasons. Jakob is working on memorizing the poem about the days in the months and he had a little question or two in his math book each day to answer about which month had how many days.

Writing this week was good. Jakob is familiar with the lowercase cursive now and can write almost any word I give him without looking at his prompt page.
We started working on some Upper case letters but quickly realized that the uppercase was in a style not normally taught today. It was the style I learned in school, but now cursive has evolved. So I am looking at the letters and seeing which ones correlate and we worked on those.

Music lessons continue to improve and he is finding great confidence in playing without me. Hazel is also showing interest and I believe I will get her a flute for next year.

Other than that we spent as much time as possible playing outside, organizing for the yard sale, and cleaning up our mud.
Again here are a few books that were enjoyed this week..

Weekly Wrapup April 4-8

So this post gets later and later huh? Time flies when you're having fun I guess.
This past week was truly fun. Not in the exciting adventurous, mom documented everything with the camera type of fun.
But the simple flow of life and embracing the moments type of fun.
I'm really seeing the fruits of my labor as far as planning goes, its exhausting at times but it really makes everything run much smoother.

Math: Jakob finished learning about the 4 processes last week including Divide. We spent a couple of days relating our division to multiplication and working on those. The jewels are helping a lot and seem to be much less distracting than the plastic math cubes I was using before as jewels cannot become airplanes, guns, or magic wands. They really just work well for math. :)

Handwriting: We finished learning the lowercase letters and worked a bit with sentences and such. Jakob asked if he could write his spelling words in cursive and did a wonderful job. I am seeing how working with form drawing has helped the most with perspective and relation here.

Theme work: I have been choosing a seasonal related theme each week and basing our readings and circle time upon that. Its the best way I have come up with to include Hazel and "fill her cup" and still not lose Jakob. This past week's topic was spring animals. We read books about sheep, butterflies, and birds.

Music: Jakob is starting to show interest in privately practicing his penny whistle and is trying to teach himself ahead of our lessons. His fingers are getting stronger as is his breath control. Overall he is very pleased as am I.

In preparation for Easter and decorating we have started to blow eggs for special decorations. I always am torn with the boiling of eggs and dyeing them since they sit out, get warm, and then its a game of roulette if you decide to eat them. So the skill has been firm yet gentle as we have busted PLENTY of eggs this week. Fun times.

Other: This week and the next few weeks will be lighter and a little bit of review as we master the skills we have learned and touch back on others that we haven't in a while. Plus with the impending move and all its preparations I think LIFE will be teaching us more than we can imagine.

And just because I always love to get ideas on books to read to the kids, here's a few that were hits this week with my crew....

Weekly Wrapup March 28- April 1

My oh my the weeks seem to rush by!
You would never know that there are actually MORE hours of daylight now, as I still feel like some days I am still struggling to get it all done.

School this week though seems to have gone well.
Math: This week's journey took us through the 4 processes of math. To compliment the lesson I made these little math gnomes to play with. Meet Plus, Minus, Multiply, and Divide.

We used them and the little jewels they find to come up with various math problems.

While Jakob has already been introduced to 3 of the processes, Divide was new and this method also helped us work a bit more visually with Fact Families.
We have continued Times table work and Roman Numeral work through daily exercises.

For the past few weeks I have been testing out a more organized approach to theme work with Hazel and our circle time. There is nothing tremendous about this just the fact that I am paying attention to her involvement a little more.
This week's theme was Rainbows. We read some truly beautiful books this week.

She also enjoyed listening to a book each day with her headphones. These quiet moments are so valuable when it comes to covering new lesson material with Jakob and not overwhelming a 4 year old with information not at her level.

We took the time to see what colors we could get from plants.
Onions

And Red Cabbage (which originally looks purple, but dyes the cloth blue.... unless you add vinegar and then you get pinkish)

We have saved the vegetable dyes and will be using them for other fun activities in the month.

Jakob has continued with his culinary explorations this week and has made breakfast a few days. Tuesday he made (almost entirely by himself) Macaroni Minestrone Soup for dinner. YUMMMMM.

Jakob made me this surprise while I was knitting. "It's the Lighthouse of Alexandria Mommy! You know, one of the Seven Wonders!" Love this kid.

Each week the kids have a seasonal poem that we recite together. It's simple enough that often-times at least Jakob has it memorized by the end of the week. We perform them for Daddy at the dinner table.

Jakob asked me this week how to get a video on the computer. His uncle is a musician and posts many of his songs on youtube. We also use youtube for any visuals that we need for further explanations. So this week Jakob spent some time creating his own tutorials. You can see them here.

Handwriting has been going well. Jakob is writing with ease words with lowercase letters. He told me he is also looking at other words that he reads and turns them into cursive in his mind. He's so funny when he does this as he unconsciously moves his head as he make the shapes in his mind.

Reading-wise Jakob has moved on to The Boxcar Children. I was unsure if this was too much of a jump in reading levels, but he has really enjoyed the books. He has come downstairs each day from his silent reading time and told me all of the wonderful things that are happening.

I suppose that is a pretty good idea of the goings on in our learning spaces this week. What treasures have you found?

Weekly Wrapup- March 21-25

This week was awesome! Not because there were loads of activities, but because I *think* we FINALLY hit upon a rythm to our day that works both for me and the kids. Even Jakob commented, "This week has been a really good week!" YESSSS!
Math: We continued our exploration of numbers and Roman numerals. Jakob has really enjoyed the riddles suggested in the curriculum. He loves jokes and joke books these days, so a riddle really appeals to him.
He is progressing along very well in becoming comfortable with and memorizing his times tables.
He has mastered skip counting by 7s and we clap them out and hop them out to increase concentration. I can't wait to get outside and play hopscotch with the times tables. There was work on identifying shapes and their prefixes which give clues to the meaning of other words.

Music: Jakob has volunteered to perform for his Scouts troop to earn an arrow and a belt loop, so we've been working on some songs so that he has them down pat. This is such a test of patience on both our parts as he learns the music and teaches his fingers how to make the notes.
Writing: Last week I started to formally instruct Jakob on cursive writing. I held off for so long mainly because I was scared. Images of how cursive assignments from school tormented him kept flashing through my mind, but after finding a very simple program on this site, I felt confident that we could overcome this task. The past two weeks have been awesome! He has taken to writing on his small slate and as we learned new letters we have had so much fun coming up with words to write. Handwriting and spelling all at once! Success!

Handwork: Jakob has been working on his knitting diligently and experimenting with knitting with his eyes closed. Silly Boy. We also had a modeling day where we just sat and made different forms out of playdough. He created a jellyfish, a scoropion, a frying pan for the pancake Hazel made, and an alien ship. Fun times by all.

This week a favorite book was "Cockadoodle-moo!" After reading all the mixed up animals we took a few minutes and drew up some mixed up animals of our own. Jakob even designed special "signs" to represent each animal creation. The symbols looked a lot like the forms we had been working on so I was excited to see them in use.

We have instilled a Gardening Day for our weekly rhythm which can range anywhere from planting and weeding to just watering our seeds. This week we planted grass seed for our easter baskets and started our own fairy garden. I'm hoping to get a few little surprises together to live there with the fairies and gnomes.

Friday evening Daddy came home from school and we went to pick him up at the airport. Originally he was supposed to be in really late so I told the kids we were gona dress up in our pjs and pick up Daddy and go out to eat. Jakob was very skeptical and afraid people would laugh. When the flight was changed to much earlier in the day I opted not to dress out but Hazel would have nothing of it and promptly put on her kitty cat pjs. Jakob played it safe by putting his pjs on OVER his clothes... just in case. In the end he said, "Nobody even cares! This is COOL!"

Weekly Wrapup-March 14th-18th

Even though the days are definitely getting longer it seems as though time is flying by!
This week began our final Math Block for the year. We will work with Math from now until our stop date which will be the middle of May when we move. (Not to say that moving isn't FULL of lessons, but alas no formal lessons during this time)
Back when I first purchased the Waldorf Curriculum we are using, I was a little confused about "Waldorf Math". Certain concepts are taught on a different time line than a grade school are so there were certain things in each previous grade that we had not covered, and others we were ahead in. During my conference with Melissa (the author of the curriculum) she suggested I start from the beginning in grade one, coupling lessons where they are needed and work our way up. When we had this conference I was already halfway through my first week in Grade 3 Math and wasn't willing to break up the block. But now we are taking her suggestion and going back through the grades and learning and relearning it all.
It sounds a bit redundant but Jakob is really enjoying the way its presented with riddles and stories, and he is still working on his multiplication tables and reviewing other math skills learned throughout the year. I write a few problems each day in his math notebook for him to solve along with his times table practice.
This mainly takes the place of me feeling the need to formally assess him at the end of the year because we are going through it all now.

The rest of the week shaped up nicely as well. We started our seeds. Hopefully they will grow and all of the materials came from the recycling bin. I love it! This week Jakob and I will work with some of the scrap wood in the wood pile to begin piecing together frames for our beds at the new house. So prayers now that no one loses a fingernail or a thumb in the process would be greatly appreciated.

Earlier in the week I saw where someone was using a Root Viewer as a little Science experiment with their kids. It looked pretty simple so I made my own version with some glass jars and eggshells at the bottom to drain the water. Of course you could do this with plastic cups as well but I didn't have any.
We will see if we can find any roots.

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and we celebrated with a day of eating all things green. Starting with Leprechaun Scones. (The Leprechaun flakes are pieces of spinach).

With the help of Pandora we listened to Celtic Music all day, talked about St. Patrick and Ireland, and read a few stories. After lunch we went to an annual celebration to hear some music and see the dancers. The kids were "river dancing" for the rest of the day.
We were all exhausted!

Jakob also started to knit again this week. He is making a pouch for his penny whistle and is knitting about 2-3 rows a day. We are using a variegated yarn that I already had so that he can easily see the difference in the working yarn and his stitches which can sometimes be difficult when all the colors are the same.

Reading wise he is still reading about 3-5 books a week. The most favorite series right now are Geronimo Stilton, Magic Tree House, Magic School Bus, and anything to do with the Solar System.
That was the week. Hope yours was awesome!

Weekly Wrapup- Feb 28- March 4

This week has flown by but at the same time lasted forever! Not sure how that happens but we managed to accomplish both!
Our studies this week had us learning about the Narragansett Native Americans. This is the tribe that is the most local to us so I really wanted to get as close to home as humanly possible. My main sources of information were turning up very little concerning this tribe and most of what I found was very similar to the other tribes in this area. Of course that's not uncommon because these people lived off the land and the seasons, so it makes a lot of sense for there to be similarities. We learned that the Narragansett lived in both Longhouses and Wigwams, and were masterful weavers and story-tellers. Although I found enough facts to cover a few days worth of lessons there was nothing truly outstanding that I could find in my research. I was very excited to find that the local tribe offered a cultural museum for the pursuit of knowledge. So on Thursday we went. It was off the beaten path and such a beautiful drive. You truly felt as though you should just be silent and take in the beauty of the land. While the physical appearance of the Museum resembled more like an older house, the wealth of information and artifacts inside was truly a sight to behold.

Our guide (who opened and closed the museum as we came and left) was a delightful woman and was full of facts and pride as she showed us around. She pointed out officials that were her immediate family, showed us a video of a council ceremony, and dispelled much of my "research" explaining that many things written about the Narragansett were not from factual sources. For instance one website I happened upon claimed the tribal language was extinct, but here I sat listening to her name off items to Jakob in a language I could not comprehend and watched the video of the ceremony in the same tongue. She amazed us by showing us actual stone tools used to fashion small beads out of shells and bones, and spoke passionately about the love of her people and the desire make sure that others understood that they were still there, still surviving, and still very proud of their land and heritage.

As we left she gave us such a wonderful gift, a few writings from tribal leaders for me to read, and a DVD of a traditional Narragansett story animated by the students of the Narragansett tribe. When we sat down to watch it, I saw the excitement in Jakob's eyes as he recognized some of the names of the animals that she had translated for us, and how beautiful the music was. It was the perfect culmination to our lesson this week as this story brought together many of the facts that we had covered. It was truly a blessing and a humbling experience.

Along with our stories and trips, Jakob wove a belt, and we ate succotash (a meal derived of the "Three Sisters"- Corn, beans, and squash) and Jakob helped to make cornmeal cakes. He got a little creative and made a Mickey Mouse shaped one as well.
Belts were generally strung with beads in special designs to commemorate the wearer in some fashion. Jakob's is made of twine and yarn. I got the idea from Family Fun
He's so funny sometimes how he chooses to hold things. I had to remind him that he could in fact put the bowl down.


Wed was Dr. Seuss' Birthday and I had not really planned to do much other than read a few Seuss books, but we all needed an attitude adjustment (we ALL were in a funk) and so I looked up some local Seuss activities and found that a small book store was having a reading and performance. It was loads of fun. And after a nice little lunch out, it was just what the Dr. ordered.
No one would guess from this picture they had been arguing all week.
These girls were from the Barrington Ballet Studio and performed parts of Seussical the Mussical. They also took a special liking to Hazel and helped her with the craft. So sweet.
A local bakery donated cookies for all of the kids. Boy were they yummy! And Beautiful!

Later that night we visited the local Science shop for some Family Science Fun, and got a surprise as Daddy was able to join us! We learned about surface tension, fibers in paper, and how sound resonates in a bell shape. It was great time.
We discovered that Paper has fibers and that when water gets in them they swell and lay straight through this experiment, the Blossoming Paper Bloom.
Daddy flying solo his partner (Hazel) abandoned him. Such a trooper.

Jakob also learned the value of sewing this week. A couple of weeks ago he made his sister a doll and has been trying to decide on his next project ever since. This week he discovered he had a hole in his favorite fuzzy socks. So he decided to sew it back up. He was so proud of himself! Now maybe he can tackle all those holes in the knees of his jeans. *grin*

Because Jakob has completed all of his Scouts requirements for the year he is now looking to see what other achievements he can work towards. He went through the book and picked out the subjects he thought he might like to learn the most about. This week's topic led to photography and he discovered how different lights affect an object. He is still working on his project and was unwilling to show off his first pictures so maybe I can show them when he's done and satisfied with their quality.

It was such a great week full of ups and downs and loads of planned and unplanned learning. I hope to continue the momentum next week as we wrap up our study of Native Americans and focus on the Seminole Nation.