Hi Ho Hi Ho it's Geocaching We Go...



One of our caches!



We started our week with a little geocaching adventure.  If you have not heard of geocaching just go to geocaching.com.  It is like a treasure hunt game.  Last Sunday morning we decided to give it a try.  It was a blast!!  We found three caches within a few miles of our house.  We also found some hiking and mountain bike trails that we never even knew where there.   

On Monday, I decided to take the kids and let them have a try at finding a cache.  There is one conveniently located at the park right next to the library. (one of our favorite parks)  The location was great and it was an easy find for kids.  They enjoyed it and so off we went to find another.  -fun family time and learning to read a map at the same time!  Does it get better than fun plus learning? 

This week we also invited some friends over to make Thanksgiving cards.  There is a lady in our area who collects cards for Meal on Wheels and they hand them out with the Thanksgiving meal.  Out came the construction paper and markers and stickers. Oh and let's not forget the warm from the oven cookies and juice boxes that made the card making even more fun!  now don't go thinking that I was some great domestic host who made homemade cookies because we had company coming over.  I am NOT that good a host.  They were pull apart Toll House!  hahaha

We also had a play date with new friends this week.  It is nice to sit and chat with another homeschooling mom about what works and what doesn't for their family. 

Next week will be a new homeschooling adventure for us.  We are taking our school on the road for the first time ever.  I am excited!

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca

The week with Halloween

So glad for the weekend to be here. 

I am going to veg out in front of the TV for a little bit today.  Did everyone hear that!  I am going to watch TV.  DO NOT BOTHER ME!!!   Bahahaha

We started our week with an off day.  No, don't go thinking that we like Halloween that much.  It just happened to work out that the Dad was off of work on Monday and we wanted to spend time with him before he went out of town for the week.  Anyway, back to Halloween...

We hosted our neighborhood's Chili Cook Off this year.  It was a driveway full of people and loads of fun!  Especially the part where my girl and her best buddy put on a show/play for the whole neighborhood.  They had been practicing- some scripts they typed up -for about 2 months.  I was not sure they would go through with it, but they did!  It takes guts to get up in front of anyone and speak, but to do it when you are 7 and 8 year old girls is just about the coolest thing I have seen in a long time!  I am one proud mama!!!

Due to a doctors appointment we had to change our schedule around a little this week.  It made for two super busy days instead of just one.  But even with that we were able to get some good "work" time in.  The kids spent a good bit of time this week on Math Whizz.  Still seems to be a fun place for them to play and learn. 

I also took it "back to old school that's so cool..." (oops sorry it might be a little early for singing) and brought out the School House Rock Multiplication DVD.  We have been watching it during breakfast time! 

We also read about protists in Science.  I have a friend who has a microscope that we are going to borrow and use next week.  That will be really neat.

The kiddos have also been playing a new game I downloaded onto the iPad.  Well, two new games actually!  One is Presidents vs Aliens and the other is Stack The States.  The iPad has gone with us everywhere this week so they could play these games.  It has been fun listening to them talking about the Presidents.  During one game session they apparently missed the question and my girl said "oh no AHH it was the one with the weird hair!"  I guess we just can't appreciate the fashion of other times.  hahahahaha

It was raining during piano this week so I drove the kids around to the piano lady's house (instead of letting them walk through the little patch of woods behind our house).  While I was sitting in the car waiting on them I was able to catch up on a favorite blog of mine www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com .  This week she shared a post about how important our words are.  A good post if you have a couple of minutes to read it. 

Off to go and refresh my coffee and kick some kid shows off my TV!  (I guess that will give me mean mom title for today!  But too bad so sad!)  :-)

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca

Dance Party Week

We partied this week!  No really, we partied!  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Halloween party after party every afternoon!

That is how it goes when you have a daughter who loves to dance and takes 6 classes!  Yeah, do the math on that! 

That makes 6 parties, and 4 afternoons of dressing up in a costume! 

We did some serious partying!!  It was fun!! 

One more Halloween party to go this year.  It's the neighborhood Chili Cook Off!  We are hosting it in our driveway this year.  It is always tons of fun.

Piano is going great!  #1 son said that this week's lesson was the best one.  Totally Awesome is what he said.  He actually wrote his own little song this week. :-)

The piano teacher is having a Christmas Concert and the kids get to play a song.  They are excited about it.  They have been playing several different Christmas songs to find ones that they like.  I love Christmas songs so to already have them playing in the house is great. 

Our month of math is coming to an end, but it has been great.  I like the progress that has been made.  I think we are all well on our way to enjoying math more and more.  The Math Whizz online tutor website has been great.  I think we will keep up with it for a little while longer. 

The leaves here in East TN are beautiful.  We are going to ride into the mountains today to see them.  Here is a picture of the pretty tree in my yard.

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca

Logic Puzzles and The Metric System

  Coffee...check

Fuzzy warm pjs...check

Fuzzy dog acting crazy...check

It must be Saturday morning!  AWESOME!!!

Still working on Math Math Math and more Math in our house.  The kids have not run away screaming yet...not about the math anyway!  Bahahaha! 

This week we worked on 2 step word problems.  Yep word problems!  Again!!  YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!  Oh no wait, I am not supposed to say that out loud!   So how about this instead:  (insert sarcasm here) word problems are awesome!  they are cool real life stuff!  word problems are fun!  blah blah blah

Anyway...after we finished the 2 step problems we moved on to Logic Puzzles.  Now those are actually a little fun.  Only a little!  What has made them fun has been listening to my girl talk through her puzzles.  She is much more of a thinker than I have given her credit for.  Plus, I learned she knows random stuff about dinosaurs.  I told her "I didn't know that you liked dinosaurs!"  She replied (very dramatically with a rolling of the eyes included) "I DO NOT LIKE DINOSAURS!  A lady came to school one day in first grade and talked all about them and that is how I know about them."  So I just told her it is cool that she remembers stuff from all the way back in 1st grade and I think, by telling her she was cool, I redeemed myself from the terrible error of thinking that she liked dinosaurs. 

The metric system was also on the agenda for this week.  It was actually quite fun.  I found a fun rap song on the eduacationrap.com page.  We have listened and danced and just acted plain silly with the song.  And that was tons of laughs!  We also labeled pieces of paper and laid them on the floor cake walk style and then worked to convert meters to kilometers, millimeters to centimeters and centimeters to meters.  Hopefully, some of it will stick.  Especially since I am walking around with "meters liters and grams, now you don't have to cram for your exam on the metric system" playing over and over and over again in my head.

I also discovered Rock 'N Learn Science videos this week.  Love them!  We watched and learned about Physical Science this week.  Very neat resource to have for review.

All in all a great week!

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca

Yogurt and a Field Trip

So, I started this thing a few weeks ago with the kids.  It's a marble jar.  Each time the kids do something nice for each other, or do a chore without being told or use good manners without being reminded they get to put a marble in the jar.  We have also let them put marbles in for good listening skills, following directions and moving up ( good day, great day, outstanding day) instead of down (loose a privilege, grounded, be cooked up in a stew for dinner, get stuck in the garbage can - I am exaggerating here! ha) on the behavior chart. 

Anyway, they reached the goal of filling the jar to the top!  YAY!!!  So Monday we went and had a treat of frozen yogurt.  Now that is a good way to start out a school week!

This week we spent a lot of time on word problems.  Dreaded word problems.  Awful word problem. Why do we have to do this word problems...or just whatever you like to call them word problems.  It was actually not that bad(do not tell my sister Lynne I said that!  She would say "I told you so!"  She helped me with many math problems growing up.).   I had the kids make banners of the "clue words" you find in word problems that help you know what operation you need to do to solve the problem.  Then, we put the banners on the wall so they have a quick reference. 


On Friday, after seeing a friend post some beautiful pictures of the mountains, I decided we needed a field trip.  So I packed up a picnic and off to Cades Cove we went.  It is beautiful right now!  We had a lot of fun.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it.  They loved walking through the old homes and we went through one of the old churches.  It was only us in the church, and my boy walked up to the pulpit and said, "Today, we will be talking about Isaiah", then he read a scripture from the bible that was laying there.  A couple came in the door and said "look we have a preacher here today!" haha  It was cute! 

Another great week in the books! 

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca

Math Math Math and Sparkling Lemonade

HOW COW!!!!!  It is so quiet at my house!

It must be Saturday morning.  Glorious Saturday morning, when everyone else in the house is still sleeping.  Well everyone with the exception of the dog and me.  It is an amazing time really.  Who would have thought that I would love a quiet morning this much!  I usually like to get up and get moving and get on with the day.  But not on Saturdays!  Not anymore.  I truly look forward to the only slow morning of my week.  It is nice to come downstairs and not have think about getting kids started on their school work for the day, or what are we having for breakfast, or do I have a plan for supper. 

This is ME time.  Glorious ME time. 

Ok so maybe I should say me and the dog time!  He keeps jumping up on the couch beside me as if to say: "Don't forget me!  I'm here too!  Yeah Yeah me!  It's still me, down here with ya lady!"  hahaha

We have had an awesome week!  We even had the kids make it to OUTSTANDING DAY on their school behavior chart on Wednesday.  I just have to say, That was outstanding!!!

We are focusing on Math for the next month or so to make sure we have a good foundation of things like fractions and decimals and word problems.  Dreaded, word problems!  I think it will be good for both of my kiddos who are just average math students.  A good foundation makes it so much easier to understand higher math and to think through all of the steps that some higher math requires.

You got your messy math, m&m math, mental math, math on the computer, and math facts.  Of course, it is Fall so let's not forget candy corn math.  If only those candy corn fit together so you could make a little pie with them for fractions.  The kids are both using the Math Whizz website and they are enjoying it.  I am glad they enjoy it because that makes it easier to do so much Math everyday when they think it is fun.

All in all it is working well so far.  No one has run from the table screaming about how they hate math...

Ok so maybe, in my head, I pictured myself running from the table screaming about how I hate math, but I didn't actually do it and that is what counts.  Right? 

I have come to the conclusion this week that being irritable and frustrated can become a habit.  It can become the easiest place to go to when things are busy and time is flying and things do not get done quite like the list says they should. (stinking list!) I am making a conscious choice to NOT go there.  (Ok it has only been a few day, but so far so good!)  I don't want to feel frustrated everyday about things that did not get done.  We are accomplishing so much everyday and that is what I need to be focusing on.  Didn't someone say: "Life happens while you are busy doing other things"?

Speaking of other things:  let's just talk about Sonic's Sparkling Lemonade.  Uh Yeah YUM!!!  Love that stuff!  This would be thanks to my SIL Julie who just had to stop and get a drink at Sonic when we were together one day last summer.  That was my first taste of Sparkling Lemonade and now I am hooked on the stuff.  Especially since I pass the Sonic almost everyday.  Darn you Sonic!!!    Here is the kicker, apparently Sparkling Lemonade is just Sprite with Lemon in it.  Who would da thunk it!  Something so yummy could be so easy with only two ingredients. 

Well, so yummy until you decide that if you are going to make it at home you should save a few calories.

Yeah that's right I wanted to save a few calories!  So I chose some Sprite Zero to make it with.  WRONG CHOICE!!  My rationale was that Pepsi Zero taste pretty good, surely Sprite Zero will too.  NOPE!  YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!  DO NOT TRY IT!!!  It is awful!!!!  Go ahead and walk an extra 20 mins and go for the good stuff! 

Truthfully it tasted so bad that I am scared to try it again, even though I have real Sprite now.  hahahaha

It is getting later in the morning and I need to go and read email and some of my favorite websites( one being http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/) before other people start coming down the stairs making noise and ruining the quiet time.

April

last week in a nutshell

Wow, I can not believe that it is Monday already.  Time to start all over again!  NOOOOOOO!!  Can't I just go back to bed.  Oh well, at least I have already had some coffee.  :-)

Last week, we spent a lot of time on Math.  We actually began our week with MESSY MATH MONDAY.  We practiced fractions with some candy corn,  some biscuit dough and then some shaving cream.  Yes, it was messy!  It was very fun too.  We have decided to give MathWhizz online a try to supplement our math.  It has games and an assessment, so it supposedly tailors the lessons to your child and where they need extra practice.  I like the idea of them getting to practice on things they are having trouble with. 

The kids are still enjoying their PE class, which is great. 

We practiced some cursive writing.  #1 son already knows how, but #1 daughter is just learning.  As far as writing goes we also wrote some fun sentences about old shoes and where they may have gone and what they might say if they could talk.  Cute stuff.  I love seeing the kids use their imagination!

A couple of examples of what a shoe might say to the person wearing it:
Do you watch where you walk? You got me muddy!   and   Do you bathe?

Another week in the books and new one already beginning.  Man, time sure flies right by!

April
Bienvenido a Mi vida loca