Fun School Week 3

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This week we had a lot of fun....naturally! I wasn't able to take as many pictures because my camera was left at Janiece's but that's OK. Life goes on.

We bought the kids gerbils this week. They helped us move a friend in 100+ degree weather when it was MISERABLE so we promised them we'd buy them a pet which was going to be a turtle. We went to the pet store and they only sell water turtles and our tank's too small. Plus I didn't want to mess with it. Then we looked online and decided on a hamster. We bought an awesome cage on Craigslist and took off to the pet store to find out hamsters nip at you, stay up all night, and aren't really good for kids. Ben suggested gerbils. So far they're working great. We did loose one last night because the cage was loose and he decided to sneak out, but we prayed and found him!

 Seriously look how cute they are! They seem to really like the boys too. They're low maintenance... life's good!

 Aybrin named his Zack (it was Zeek but he kept changing it) and Asher named his Zion which I adore!

 We also heard this noise in our garage all night last week. Tons of tools falling over, just a mess. Ben went to investigate and couldn't find anything. He had been working on installing a garage door motor for a couple of days and had left the door open for a while but we didn't think it was a big deal. WRONG! The next morning he looked again and found this!! At first the way it was laying, he thought it was a badger but it turned out to be an opossum. We had to scoot him out with brooms. I was being a chicken up on the step stool but Ben handled it so well ;-)

 This week we cooked home made cinnamon muffins which were yummy! We had never made them before but I need to find the recipe and make them again. We discussed a lot of fractions while this cooking was going on.

 Asher found snails in the dried up pond during nature study. These are a common site here and we really like the variety the pond gives us for our studies! Look at those eyelashes!

 

 We also decorated for fall!!

 Asher is studying the letter B in pre-school so we've really been working with the book "We're going on a bear hunt". This is a bear hunt game the boys were able to play for math!

 Asher seems to like his bottle cap letters but this day was a little overwhelming since I gave him all the captial and lower case alphabet letters.

 To make our bottle cap letters we took mod podge (well our home made stuff which DID NOT work well at all...maybe too much water?)....

 and brushed it on our letters. Then attached it to the bottle caps!

We also started working hard core on our Christmas Cantata! We are SOOOOO excited about this. It's been something we've wanted to do for several years but we just never get around to it. Well this year is different! We have a list of things we'll be doing, we're working on the venue and practicing a lot! I don't want to tell you the details but it involves this:

 and this....

 Here are some of the things we're learning in Aybrin's new language program: State of being verbs!

 Grandma Russell also came up to teach a cake decorating class. We've been SUPER excited about this! She used to sell cakes professionally and now she's teaching all of us!

 Janiece and I were able to decorate the butterfly. We took it to our Mom for her birthday party that night!

  More hints from our Christmas Cantata! We can't wait!!!

Fun School Week 2

We have had another busy week here in our world. How about you? It just seems like my weeks are flying by faster and faster. I need to learn to SLOW down! But when?

We started off the week by having Asher's birthday! He's now 5 and I can't believe it! He's cute, smart, fun, cuddly and hilarious! He's just a gorgeous little boy for sure. So here are some pictures from his airplane birthday party.

On the day of his birthday him and Aybrin both received presents. They were zuzu pet toys!

 All the family kiddos (except Hudson who didn't want his picture taken). Elizabeth and Samantha even came down with Uncle Riley from Kansas City!

 Aybrin hot glued some of his "collection" stuff together and made Asher something. Enoch then gave Asher his prized marble set so this was a special birthday!

Do you think he's excited?

My Mom (Gramee) always buys ALL the kids a present and they get this huge fanfare with opening them. It's great! They love it! So here are all the kids getting their presents from her.

Aybrin

Eleesia

Elizabeth

Essa

Hudson

Samantha

 This week in school we are in Week 2 introduction to Countries and Cultures in My Father's World. I'm glad the week is over because I can't wait to start learning about the countries. The boys should be getting their fake passports back this week. Then we get to stamp each country as we visit them. We did get to go to Mexico (for real) this summer so we're familiar with why passports are important and what you do with them. Do you know they no longer stamp passports though? It's all on computers and electronically documented. I was SOOO disappointed!
 In pre-school we're going through the alphabet so we had lots of fun apple and ant games this week. He did lots of pattern matching, math games, writing, puzzles, etc along with the normal history, science, math and geography that we do together.
  We were also able to start our Nature Notebook this week and low and behold we found acorns on our tree! Acorns go great with our "A" letter this week!

 The boys also ate Ants on a Log (although the ants are not here in this picture)

 Look how studious he is!

 The boys were able to bake with their new IKEA baking set Gramee got Asher for his birthday!

 Here's what our nature journals look like so far. We did leaf and bark rubbings and then we're pressing the leaves inside the books!

 We learned about xylems in Science and how they carry water. So we did an experiment with celery tearing off the xylem on one stalk and leaving it in place on the other. I thought it would be really good to show them how the leaves of the celery would turn blue and so far it's working great. Every day the celery turns brighter blue!

 

The boys also finished painting our world globe that we started last week. We paper mached a balloon and painted the continents and oceans. I thought the boys could do this on their own while I loaded the dishes. I was wrong. This is what I came out to!

 We've also been working on our basement for a month! It's taking us forever. This room is awful. There was deer paneling on half of the walls and then a rock paneling over more of the paneling. So 3 kinds of paneling layered in places but all 3 were visible! It was awful. So after we took down that paneling and the ceiling fan (which had bowed blades that hit you when you walked in), I took this picture. Pretty awful huh? This is about what my whole house looked like when we moved in. If you haven't seen pictures you should go back some of the posts!

And here's what it looked like mid week. It looks even better now but I'll wait and post a picture again next week.

Well that's our week in review. Now got to run to Struble's Barbershop for the men to get haircuts! Hope your week is blessed!