Trent Family Blog

Weekly Wrap-Up - Weeks 28 & 29

Life has been moving along really fast the last couple of weeks. Hence, another weekly wrap-up that covers two weeks. We're also getting so much closer to vacation. We leave this coming Friday on a Mission Trip with our middle schoolers to Gulf Shores, AL. We will be doing school while there, because the following week we leave for a week long Disney Cruise. We'll be gone for two weeks total, and will even get to spend a day at the Magic Kingdom. We are all very excited, and trying to do school amidst the laundry and the packing has been hard. I spent Sunday afternoon preparing well for this week of school, so that it will not require a lot of daily planning and prep.

Now a quick recap of what we've been learning the last couple of weeks:

Dillon - In math, we wrapped up the unit on fractions. He took his test early last week, and got a perfect score. We moved on to decimals this week. We've had a great couple of weeks in math. In language arts we continued to work on adverbs, focusing on telling adjectives/adverbs apart. He also learned to diagram adverbs as well. He read the book Charlie's House by Clyde Robert Bulla, a story about a young boy from England that comes to America as an indentured slave. He finished that book early this week, and started reading Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. It is the sequel to Shiloh which he read earlier this year. We also got the movie of the first Shiloh at the library and plan on watching it this week.

Dillon and I played a fraction feud game to practice comparing fractions. I got the idea here.

Abby - We've been reading the Felicity Books. We've read Felicity Learns a Lesson, Felicity's Surprise, and this week started Happy Birthday, Felicity. We've enjoyed reading these together a lot, and often end up reading 2-3 chapters in a sitting. In language arts, she's been doing lots of sentence writing. We've also continued to work on adding suffixes to root words, rhyming words, and homonyms. In math we've been doing a lot of review, review, review. We've been covering money, time, odds & evens, and liquid measurements.

She likes to use this money, which I've put magnetic tape on, when she's working on money problems.

History - We've been studying the Spanish and their impact on America. We read about the missions started by the Spanish Jesuit Priests in the book Life in a California Mission by Sally Senzell Isaacs. I wish that we would've know the historical impact of the missions when we were in California last summer, because many of them are still standing today. I would've loved to have been able to refer back to that. We did look at the path of the El Camino Real which was the road that connected the California Missions. We drove on some of that same stretch of roadway on our trip this past summer. We also read the book, Ancient Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde by Caroline Arnold. This was a fascinating look at the way these ancient Indians of the Southwest lived. Dillon especially enjoyed this book.

Science - In science we've learned all we ever wanted to know about pinnipeds (which means "fin-footed" mammals). This group includes seals, sea lions, and walruses. We also learned about manatees and dugongs. I learned something also, because I had never heard of a dugong. They are very similar to manatees with the main difference being where they live and the shape of their tails. Manatees live in North and South America and have rounded "beaver like" tails. Dugongs are found near the African coast, and have a more "whale like" or triangular tail. We have actually seen manatees at DIsney in the Living Seas area in Epcot. One of the manatees they have there has a damaged fin. We learned from our text that one of the biggest threats to manatees are boats, but they are not usually killed by them just injured. How neat that we've seen one of the rescued manatees at Epcot.

We've had some fun field trips/excursions over the last couple of weeks, too. Last Friday, we woke up early and got all of our school work done in a couple of hours, then we took off for the zoo. It was beautiful weather, and we even got to see the new baby Panda, Po and his mother. This week Dillon and I got to go to a Mother/Son event at our church. We got to see the Christian illusionist Harris III. We had such a fun night. Afterwards, they had popcorn, ice cream, and a fun photo booth. We enjoyed a fun evening together.

Dillon with Harris III

Life has been busy lately, but oh so fun. I hope things are going well for you in your homeschool/life as well. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. If you would like to see how other homeschoolers are doing this week, head over there to find out. Thanks, Kris, for hosting this each week.

  

Weekly Wrap-Up - Week 26

We took off the last week of February with our local schools for winter break. We had a beautiful week with warm temperatures. We spent a few days on a retreat in the North Georgia Mountains with our middle schoolers at church. It was absolutely perfect. I forgot to take my nicer camera, but the trusty I-phone came through for me. Here are a few pics. from Winter Retreat.

Sharp Top Cove

Some of our middle schoolers did the zip line into the lake (which was still crazy cold)

Dillon and Abby (with Chris) about to climb the rock wall

We had such a great time on this trip. We really have an awesome group of middle schoolers. I also enjoyed some much needed time away from school and housework that sometimes seem unending. It was very refreshing to get away for a few days.

We returned home just in time to celebrate my birthday, my 40th birthday. When did that happen? We enjoyed a fun evening with friends and family. I feel completely blessed and am so thankful for my family.

Well, needless to say, after a week off from school with lots of fun times with friends and some really fabulous weather, getting back into the routine of school this week has not been that easy. We managed to get it all done, but there was not a whole lot of enthusiasm. (from Mom or the kids!)

Our learning week:

Dillon - He read the book The Printer's Apprentice by Stephen Krensky. This is a fictitious book that uses the historical facts and figures surrounding the trial of Peter Zenger, a newspaper editor in the city of New York in 1734. In this book we follow the career of a young apprentice named Gus who witnesses some of the events surrounding the trial of Peter Zenger. This book went along well with where we are in our study of American History. This week in language, he began working on adverbs and the questions they answer. In math, we're still working on fractions, which is good because he still needs a lot more practice. He also continues to work through his lessons on Typing Instructor. He's really enjoyed this program. To practice his typing skills this week, he wrote a couple of e-mails to grandparents.

Abby - We began reading Happy Birthday, Kit this week. She loves these American Girl books. We're actually going to go back and read the Felicity books starting next week, because they will go along better with our history study. In language arts, she's been continuing to write sentences and small 2-4 sentence "stories". She loves to write and does a really good job on her "stories". In math, she's been doing subtracting without a number line. I've been teaching her to count up. We've also been working a lot with our magnetic money, and learning to count nickels/pennies, dimes/pennies, and quarter/pennies.

History - We read the story of John Peter Zenger: Free Press Advocate by Arthur M. Schlesinger. This one was not as interesting to the kids as some of the other books we've read, but I did not remember ever having read about Peter Zenger in history, so I really enjoyed it. I think the whole idea of free press and the reasons behind Zenger's arrest and trial were hard for my children to follow. They did ask a lot of questions, and I was constantly having to stop to explain something to them in a way they could understand it better. So hopefully, they retained a little of it. 

Science - On Wednesday, we headed to the Georgia Aquarium with some good friends for a fun field trip. It was our best day at the aquarium yet. It was so empty that we were able to see so much more and really take time to experience the exhibits. One of our favorite things of the day was watching the Sea Otters being fed. The trainer had them perform for their food, and it was fun to see them following the commands. Another one of my favorite parts on this day was the big ocean theater room. In the past it's always been so crowded that it's hard to enjoy. On this day, our kids were the only ones at the window, and it was so peaceful just to sit their and watch the fish. Once again, I left my big camera at home, but here's and I-phone shot.

If you'd like to see some really excellent photos and hear more about our day at the Georgia Aquarium, you can head over to my friend Jamie's post on our day at the aquarium at See Jamie Blog. Her hubby Ken got some great fishy photos!

I hope that you and yours have had a wonderful week. I know the winter blahs hit us a little this week, but we're still plugging along. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and her Weekly Wrap-Up. You should head over there to check out what everyone else has been up to the past week.

Weekly Wrap-Up - Weeks 24-25

I started to title this entry "Too Beautiful to be Blogging" and, no, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about the weather. Spring has arrived a little early here in the Atlanta area, and even if winter decides to return, we've had a definite case of spring fever around the Trent house lately. If we're not enjoying the beautiful weather outside, we're doing spring cleaning/organizing inside. So blogging has definitely taken a back burner, but I did want to post about our last couple of weeks of school and life.

What we've been learning:

Abby - In math, we started learning liquid measurements and estimation. We've continued to review time and money and to drill addition facts. On Valentine's, she did  a bar graph using conversation hearts.

In language arts, Abby's been working on sentence writing, ABC order, and reading comprehension. We've been reading lots of ocean and Valentine's books. A few of our favorites have been Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle, Ocean Hide and Seek by Jennifer Evans Kramer and The Whale's Song by Dyan Sheldon. We also enjoyed Valentine Mice by Bethany Roberts and The Valentine Bears by Eve Bunting.

Dillon - In math last week, we finished the geometry section in our Horizon's math book by studying area and volume. This week we moved on to fractions. We've studied equivalent fractions, greatest common factors and lowest term fractions. We also continue to drill multiplication facts. On Valentine's Day, we played Valentine's Battleship.

We used 2 Valentine's 100's charts that I found here. We each had 10 candy conversation hearts that we randomly placed on our chart (each heart covering one number). To make a guess of where your opponent's hearts are, you must give a multiplication problem or a division problem. For example to guess #48, you might say 4 X 12 or 6 X 8. We just x'd out the numbers we called, so that we wouldn't call them again. If you guess correct, you get to have the heart. Whoever gets all the hearts first wins. Dillon won our game, but it took about 30 minutes to finish the game.

In language arts, he's been working on adjectives and diagraming adjectives. We've also been working on writing and worked on alliteration and main idea. He finished reading The Journal of Jasper Jonathan Pierce from the My Name is America series. He read several books this week on ocean animals as well.

Science - We wrapped up our chapter on whales in our Apologia Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day book. The kids completed the first part of an art project on ocean animals. Hopefully next week, I can share the completed project.

History - We finished the book Amos Fortune: Free Man by Elizabeth Yates. This was such a good book, and I am so glad that we were able to read it. We love how Amos trusted in the Lord for everything. There were so many wonderful life lessons to learn from this book.

Last weekend, we celebrated Valentine's with our kiddos. On Friday night, Chris and Abby attended the Daddy/Daughter Valentine Dance at our church. Dillon and I always go out on a date as well on this night, and we got all dressed up and headed to O'Charley's for a yummy dinner.

 Abby with her beautiful flowers from Daddy

Abby and Daddy

Me and my handsome date

We're actually taking a break this week with the local public schools. We're going on a winter retreat with our middle schoolers at church to the beautiful north Georgia Mountains for a few days. I'll spend the rest of the week continuing to do some spring cleaning, and getting ready for our next three weeks of school. I also have a birthday next weekend, one of those "big" ones. I'm looking forward to celebrating with my friends and family.

I hope that you and yours have had a wonderful week. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and her Weekly Wrap-Up. You can head over there to see what everyone else has been up to the past week.

Weekly Wrap-Up - Week 23

This was another short week for us. My wonderful in-laws came over on Wednesday afternoon and took my two kiddos back with them for a long weekend in the country. Chris and I headed out of town on Thursday morning to Chattanooga, TN for the Southeast Conclave Conference for youth ministry. We had such a great time at this conference attending seminars, wonderful worship with Aaron Keys and David Platt, and some much needed couple time for the two of us. We picked up our kids this afternoon on the way home, and our ears are once again filled with the noise of a busy house. So thankful for our quiet weekend, though.

Our learning this week:

Dillon - He started a new book this week. It is from the My Name is America series and it is called The Journal of Jasper Jonathan Pierce. In language arts he continued to work on pronouns and learned how to diagram compound subject and compound verbs. In math he's continuing to work on geometry. This week we focused on circles and perimeter. He's also been working on map skills, and this week worked on a physical map of the state of Georgia.

Abby - Some of the books we read this week included Dancing with the Manatees by Faith McNulty and All Kinds of Habitats by Sally Hewitt. We also read a couple of Fancy Nancy books just for fun. Abby especially loves the Ooh La La, It's Beauty Day one. She also loves to talk in what she calls her "French" accent after reading these books:-) In language, she's continuing to work on suffixes -ed and -ing. We're also getting much more into sentence writing. In math she's been working on measuring with centimeters, shapes, even & odd numbers, and sequencing. We've also been really working hard on addition flashcard drill and she is getting so fast. I'm really excited about the progress she's made since I decided we needed to drill, drill, drill those facts.

In history this week, we studied the difference between indentured servants and slaves, and we began reading the book Amos Fortune: Free Man by Elizabeth Yates. This has been our read aloud this week during/right after lunch. So far we are enjoying it.

Both kids also took some review work with them to Granny's house this weekend. It was mostly in the form of worksheets, but I wanted them to do at least some school over the two days they were missing. It ended up raining almost the whole time they were there (and even sleeting, at one point), so it was good that they had something to help keep them occupied.

I'm leaving you with a few pictures that Abby took on our trip to the Zoo last Saturday. Hard to believe that it was sunny and 67 that day. This week/weekend has been so cold. Hope Mr. Groundhog was right and that we're in for an early spring, because we're ready for it.

Chris and Dillon

We've never seen the lion so close to the glass. He was so big and beautiful.

A Giraffe Family (At least that's what we were calling it)

Thanks for reading along as I shared our week. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and her Weekly Wrap-up. You can head over there to check out what other homeschoolers have been up to this week. Hope you and you're family are managing to stay warm wherever you are and that you're enjoying your weekend.

Weekly Wrap-Up - Week 22

So glad it's the weekend, and such a beautiful one at that. It's supposed to be sunny and 63 tomorrow, and we're looking forward to a trip to the zoo.

We've had a great week of school. I plan for three weeks at a time, and this week started the beginning of a new three weeks. I wasn't quite prepared when Monday rolled around, so I took a teacher workday on Monday to finish getting ready. I'm actually preparing for four weeks to take us right up to our winter break in February. So the kids would not just sit around all day begging for TV or video game time, I did schedule out their day. They spent the morning working together on an ocean animal book. They did research on some of their favorite ocean animals and either drew a picture or we printed one from the internet. 

Working together on their ocean animal book

On Monday afternoon, they spent time cleaning their rooms and reading quietly in their rooms. They also watched Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor. They did a great job working together Monday and allowed me to get a lot of planning done.

The rest of our week:

Abby - In math, she's continuing to work on time, money, bar graphs and subtraction. We also began measuring with centimeters this week and today she was adding 3 double digit numbers. I'm also continuing to drill her on addition facts. In language arts this week we continued to work on root words and suffixes and writing sentences correctly. We also reviewed ABC order. Her spelling words this week were "all" and "alk" words. I am really enjoying Abeka spelling instead of Horizon's. Because we were doing Abeka Phonics and Language, it just flows so much better for her. This week we read  Ibis, A True Whale Story by John Himmelman and the Magic School Bus The Wild Whale Watch by Eva Moore.

Dillon - In math this week he began more geometry. We worked with shapes, geometric terms, and angles. I showed him how to use a protractor to measure angles, and now he wants to use it even when he doesn't need to. He really enjoyed math lessons this week :-) In language arts this week, I had him go through the steps in his Abeka language book to write a book report on Shiloh. He finished the book last week and really liked it, so I thought it would make a good book report book. He did very well on this, which made me very happy, because writing is not his favorite thing to do. We also worked on similes and metaphors. On Wednesday, he read a picture book, The Lost Sailor by Pam Conrad, and located examples of metaphors and similes. Today he had to write some of his own similes and use them in sentences.

History - We read about the Great Awakening in our TruthQuest History text this week. We also read a wonderful book on George Whitefield, who was a preacher in the New World during the Great Awakening. The book was George Whitefield: Clergyman and Scholar by Susan Martins Miller. We began reading it on Tuesday during lunch and read the entire book. It was so interesting and well written that it held all of our attention.

Science - The kids worked on an ocean animal book on Monday. We spent the rest of the week learning about whales in our Apologia text. We will probably continue our study of whales over the next couple of weeks.

We've also been watching our bird feeders a lot this week. We've spotted quite a few "new to our feeder" birds. We identified these this morning using our bird book and the internet. We think they're Chipping Sparrows.

They showed up on Wednesday, and we think they should be called "piggy" sparrows because of how much they eat. This feeder was completely full on Wednesday, and this shot was taken today. Yesterday there were six of these little guys on the feeder at one time. Dillon is such an avid birder that I often have to redirect him to his school work throughout the day. We all love watching our backyard friends.

I'm linking up to Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and her Weekly Wrap Up. You can follow this link over there to check out how other homeschoolers spent their week. Hope you and yours have a wonderful weekend.

Weekly Wrap-Ups - Weeks 20 & 21

The week of Jan. 10th-14th is being called the snow week in the Atlanta area. We had snow/ice on the ground for more than a week. In fact where the snow was piled up, or made into a snowman, there is still snow on the ground. Public schools in our area missed the entire week of school, and in our homeschool, we just covered the basics. It was a really fun week with lots of playing in the snow, and then heading inside to warm up. 

This is what we've been learning the last two weeks:

Dillon - He continued reading the story Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and finished it this week. He completed several writing activities with the book and had daily reading comprehension questions to answer. He really enjoyed this book and has already asked to read the other Shiloh books. I'm glad because I hope that he will enjoy reading them for his extra, non-assigned reading. In language, he's covered plurals, and this week we've been working on pronouns. In math he's been doing a lot of review work. He's also been working on time conversions and time zones. This week he worked on solving logic problems and reviewed geometric terms like points, lines, segments, and rays. This is all information that he learned in 3rd grade last year, but the review has been really good for him.

Abby - We've been reading lots of books. We finished Kit Learns a Lesson and started on Kit's Surprise. Some of our favorite picture books from the last two weeks have been All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schirtle, Fish School by Nancy Poydar, 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle, Hello Ocean by Pam Munoz Ryan and Big Al by Andrew Clements. Most of these were ocean or fish books to go along with our science studies. In language arts Abby has  continued to learn about suffixes and root words. She started learning about homonyms this week and also continues to work on writing good sentences. She is doing so well with her writing. In math, she's been working on number words from 100-200, adding money, drawing the hands on a clock to depict the correct time and bar graphs.

History - We learned about the Georgia Colony and its founder James Edward Oglethorpe. We read Georgia by Craig and Katherine Doherty. Although, we've lived in Georgia for 6 years, this was all new information for me as well. I grew up in Alabama and then spent eleven years in Texas so it was fun to learn about the state we now call home.

Science - We're really enjoying learning about the ocean, as going to the beach is one of our favorite things to do as a family. We can't wait for some hands on learning over spring break:-) This week we did some supplemental learning from some great books that we checked out from the library. Our favorite was I Wonder Why the Sea is Salty and Other Questions About the Oceans by Anita Ganeri. 

We also got some science in last weekend when we went with Chris to Pigeon Forge where he was teaching at a conference. We got there a day early and spent some time in Wonderworks. We had never been to one of these before and it was really fun. The best part was that when we arrived at opening (9AM) we were the only ones there. We had the place completely to ourselves until about 10 when one other family arrived. 

Dillon pulling himself up with a pulley system

Abby getting a little windblown in the hurricane tunnel

Dillon and Abby doing some rock climbing

Abby and I trying to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"

The boy in the bubble

This is the awesome 4 story ropes course that we all (including Abby and I) had a blast on. I was so proud of Abby (and myself) for doing this. Heights are not our thing, but it was sooo much fun. And we were the only ones on it. It was great.

So I would highly recommend Wonderworks if you're ever in Pigeon Forge,TN. But, a little hint....get there early. 

I'm linking up with the Kris and the Weekly Wrap-Up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, so you can head over there to see how everyone else's week went.

Snow Day (or should I say Days?)

About 4-5 days before we ever saw anything fall from the sky, our weather forecasters here in the Atlanta area started talking about the possibility for large amounts of snow Sunday night into Monday. I love snow, but didn't want to get my hopes up. By Saturday evening, though, it was starting to look much more promising. YAY!

Unfortunately, I had already planned a short week of school because we are leaving to go out of town on Friday. So... I hated to miss another full day of school. I gave the kids the option on Sunday morning to come home after church and do their schoolwork for Monday so that they could have a snow day on Monday with the rest of the neighborhood kids. They gladly jumped on this opportunity.

Jump to Monday morning and a whopping 5 1/2 inches of snow was on the ground. I think that is the most snow I've ever woken up to (at least in my own home). It was absolutely beautiful! And still is. We're now on Day 2 of the Big Snow. We did school this morning, but just the basics and the kids were able to head out for round 2 of fun in the snow this afternoon.

Now, we just found out that public schools are out for a 3rd snow day tomorrow and all of our Wednesday night activities at church have been cancelled as well. Can you say cabin fever?  For my sanity, we will probably have as close to a normal day of homeschool as possible tomorrow. I'm sure though at some point, the kids will be bundling up to head out and enjoy some more play time in the snow. And I might just have to join them :-) After all it might be a while before we see this much snow again.

Home Sweet Home

Walking to the neighbor's to do some sledding

All bundled up - ready to do some sledding.

Dillon does great for his first time to sled.

Abby's turn

Love how quiet everything seems in a blanket of white.

A pretty North American Cardinal

And a pretty girl!

Thanks for letting me share about our fun days in the snow. It's been so beautiful and so much fun.

Weekly Wrap-Up - Week 19

I know that several weeks have been skipped, but I do want to try and get back in the habit of posting a weekly wrap-up. This was our first week back to school after the much-needed and much-appreciated Christmas break. I can't believe it's already Week 19. We're already half-way through our first year of homeschooling! On Monday, I had a teacher workday while my two kiddos headed to the Tellus Museum in Cartersville with my sister-in-law and their two cousins. They had an absolute blast spending the day with their cousins and hopefully learned a few things too! 

Our school week:

Dillon - In math, he has finally finished the lessons that were focused on division, and we are both pretty happy about that. This week we reviewed telling time, time definitions, and equations. Because his lessons weren't so heavy on division, he finished them much more quickly than usual. We're also continuing multiplication and division drills 2-3 times a week. Spelling this week was a review lesson of 30 vocabulary words. It was not an easy week, and it was a short one at that, but he did a wonderful job on his test today. In language, we did lots of review on subjects and predicates, and he even started simple diagramming. He also started a new novel this week. He is reading Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. He had to do a character map of the main character Marty this week where he listed character traits that he had discovered from his reading. Other activities he completed this week were some free drawing, journaling, and a mind-benders puzzle. We also watched the movie, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. He read the book before Christmas and we had been waiting on a copy from the library. I had never seen the movie, but it was actually pretty good and stuck very close to the book.

 

Abby - Math this week for Abby has been mostly review. We did start on hundreds in place value today. Other concepts that we're continuing to work on are fractions, telling time, subtraction, measuring in inches and odd/even.  We're also drilling addition flascards 2-3 times a week. She's mastered doubles, zeros, ones, and now we're on twos. In language this week she's been focusing on adding suffixes to root words, and writing sentences correctly. She's doing great on her sentence writing. We've also been working on ABC order. This week in one of her boxes, I gave her 5 of her Disney princess dolls, and she had to put them in alphabetical order. We had done this a few weeks ago with some plastic animals. It's great hands on practice for a concept that needs to be learned. In reading this week, we've read a couple of Leo Lionni books about fish. We read Swimmy and Fish is Fish. We also started Kit Learns a Lesson. Abby loves these American Girl books and never wants to stop at the end of a chapter. I kinda want to know what happens, too :-)

Science - We started a new Apologia Science book for this semester. We are now studying Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day. We finished the bird portion of our Flying Creatures book and decided to take a break from other flying creatures to study something else. So far we are loving it. We're also excited because we received Georgia Aquarium passes as a Christmas present from my parents. We went once over the holidays and can't wait to head back for some great field trip learning.

We did a couple of experiments this week from our Apologia text. One was very successful, the other, not so much. We studied how surface currents form on top of the ocean due to wind. We took a rectangular shaped casserole dish and filled it about half full with water. We added some Cheerios to the top of the water then we aimed the airflow from two hairdryers down opposite sides of the dish in opposite directions. We created a gyre, which is a circular current on top of the water.

Our other experiment was supposed to demonstrate the effects of water pressure on the lungs. This was to explain why we can only dive so deep in the ocean. This experiment, however, failed. We still had fun trying, though. Sorry, I also never took any photos in the process of the failed experiment. It involved a two liter bottle and a balloon (and my very weak lungs.)

History - We're still studying the colonial period of American History. This week we learned about schooling in colonial times. We read the book Going to School in Colonial America by Shelley Swanson Sateren. We then did a compare and contrast between school today (both public and homeschool) and school during colonial times.

A few closing shots from our trip to the Georgia Aquarium:

Dillon and Abby with their cousin Caleb

Hope you and your families have had a wonderful week. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird, Un-Socialized Homeschoolers for her Weekly Wrap-Up. You can head over there, too, to see how everyone else's week went.

Weekly Wrap-Up (The Busy Christmas Version)

I had good intentions when I began this blog, but as a first year homeschool mom, the holidays have thrown me for a loop. Don't get me wrong, I am loving having my kids at home this time of year, but after you throw in Christmas parties, shopping, Christmas baking and decorating into the mix, there's not much time left for blogging. That being said, I did want to do a quick update on some of our Christmas happenings. We have been plugging along with our core subjects of math, language, reading, and phonics (for Abby). We have put science and history on hold for a few weeks to enjoy the season of Christmas.   

My little elves getting their work done. I came down one morning and found them already working on their boxes with their Santa hats on. Can I just say again that I love homeschool!!!

Some Christmas books we've been reading:

The Tale of Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt

The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

Christmas in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Auntie Claus by Elise Primavera

The Christmas Day Kitten by James Herriot

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish 

Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Treasury for Kids

We also read about the tradition of the advent wreath and began our very own two Sunday evenings ago for the first time ever. We're using Lisa Welchel's book The ADVENTure of Christmas: Helping Children Find Jesus in our Holiday Traditions. This book is also great for giving spiritual meaning to many of the symbols of Christmas. We've also been doing daily devotional readings leading up to Christmas day.

The making of Christmas goodies has also consumed a lot of our time, but I've enjoyed having my little elves around to help. We made Christmas goodies last week for the GA Lottie Moon Bake Sale and this week made more to give out as gifts. The house and yard were decorated last weekend. All that's left to do is finish shopping and to get gifts wrapped and under the tree. (Oh Yeah... And to attempt to keep my house somewhat clean:-)

Abby helping me add the ingredients for our Crockpot Chocolate Covered Cashews (the easiest Christmas goodies ever) Here's the recipe in case you're interested.

 

Chocolate Covered Nuts (I've used cashews and peanuts)

32 oz. salted nuts

1 bar Baker's milk chocolate

12 oz. milk chocolate chips

1pkg. white almond bark

1 pkg. choc. almond bark

Add ingredients to crockpot in order given. Do not mix or stir. Heat on low for 3 hrs. After 3 hrs. stir well and drop by teaspoon fulls onto wax paper. Allow to cool and harden. Then enjoy!

 

Here's a closing shot of my beautiful ballerina. Abby had her Christmas recital this last Thursday night. She did an amazing job. We were so proud of her.

I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for her Weekly Wrap-Up. You can head over there, too, to check out some other homeschool blogs and to see how their weeks went.

I hope that you and your family are taking time to enjoy this wonderful Christmas season and to experience the love that God has for us in His son Jesus. Merry Christmas!

Weekly Wrap-Up - Week 14

This week has been a great learning week. Although we haven't done as much cool, fun, hands-on stuff, both kids really buckled down and worked hard this week. Thursday night kicked off one of the most exciting weekends at our church, D-Now weekend. This stands for disciple now and it is a weekend full of bible study, awesome worship, and loads of fun for the middle and high school students. Dillon and Abby love this weekend and get to participate in a lot of it (even though they aren't in our student ministry quite yet). Thursday night worship included the band Unhindered and our speaker was Clay Scroggins. It was a great kick-off to the weekend.

Our School Week:

Dillon - This week he continued through the 4 steps of the writing process to write a short report on George Washington Carver. He wrote his final draft on Friday, and he and I were both very pleased. He made it through with minimum complaint also. In math he's been reviewing equations, problem solving and simple division. This week he read The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh. We had not read this book before and really enjoyed it. It also goes along great with our history studies right now.

Abby - This week in math has been mostly review, but it has been so good for her because I feel like she's really grasping the concepts we've been working on. We reviewed counting pennies and dimes (together), and nickels and quarters (individually). We also continued to work on telling time and subtraction. In language arts she focused on contractions, syllables and suffixes. Some of the books we read were Don't Eat too Much Turkey by Miriam Cohen, Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson and Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay. 

In history, we read about the pirates that were so common in early colonial days along the eastern coast. This topic really held their attention. We discussed how attractive many books and movies (yes Disney is one of the worst) make the "pirate" life seem to be, but how in reality they were really bad men (and women) who would steal and kill. We read the book Pirates by Gail Gibbons. We also learned about the early Indian Wars that were led by King Phillip who was the son of the great Wampanoag Chief Massasoit. We read King Phillip: Indian Leader by Dennis Fradin. 

We completed another fun "fall" themed art project that I got from Deep Space Sparkle. It was a three step project that we finally finished this afternoon. It's called an "Autumn Collage". You can get the directions here.

This was step one - painting paper in fall colors.

I failed to photograph it in progress, but step 2 was cutting out pumpkin, squash, and gourd shapes from the painted paper and gluing them to a sheet of black construction paper.

Step 3 was adding some gold paint for vines.

The finished projects.

We continued our break from our Apologia text this week, but enjoyed lots of outdoor fun and watching our bird friends in our own backyard. Here are a few fun pics. from our week of beautiful fall weather.

A moth the kids found with an injured wing. 

This Tufted Titmouse was taking a bath.

This Brown Thrasher was enjoying the makeshift birdbath. They play here more than our real bird bath.

A North American Cardinal

Trampoline Fun!

My little Monkey:-)

We're also participating in the shoebox collection for Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child on this Sunday, so we spent yesterday afternoon (and a quick trip tonight) shopping and tonight we packed our boxes. The kids both wrote really great letters and decorated with some Christmas drawings. They can't wait to drop them off in the morning.

Tonight we headed back to the church for more D-Now fun, and we only have one more week until Thanksgiving break. We can't wait to spend some time in the country at Grandy and Pappy's house.

Hope you and your families have had a wonderful week. I'm linking up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for her Weekly Wrap-Up. You can head over there, too, to see how everyone else's week went.