Thursday, August 28, 2014

We Survived!

This week couldn't have gone any smoother if I had planned it myself...wait...I did plan it myself. 


Prior to our "official" first day, I really did envision chaos as we all tried to get back into the groove of school. But, I have some awesome kids and we all got back into our schedule without missing a beat. I have been more productive this week than I have been all summer. 

It feels good to have a purpose again!

The hardest part for Kristen this week was waking up at 8:00. Oh the woes of being a homeschooled child! If only I could sleep in until 8:00 everyday. She has worked hard this week, done awesome in her spelling (a subject she really struggled with last year) and didn't complain at all. Her favorite subject so far is writing, which is pretty fun...even I enjoy it. 


The hardest part for Lauren this week has been paying attention. I could tell when I was loosing her and that was about every five minutes (no joke). At least she was honest and told me she wasn't listening. I would be mid-sentence reading or talking about something and she would interrupt me and ask if I was done yet. This was always followed by a big giant sigh. Everything, except what I was talking about, became interesting to her...the bottom of the table...the ceiling fan...her toenails...her hair. 

Despite her wandering mind, Lauren has worked hard this week and done better than I envisioned. She is doing great with her reading, we are working hard on her handwriting, and while she is complaining, at least it's not as much as I expected. Progress! I am not sure what her favorite subject is, but I do know her favorite time of the day is when school is finished. 


I asked the kids what their favorite part of the week was and it was unanimous...our nature walk and planting our flowers. 



Kristen loved planting her flower and has taken care of it, checking everyday to see if it has grown. Lauren wanted to eat the seeds because they looked like fruity pebbles...and they kinda did. Dallas started by crumpling up his cup and throwing it on the ground announcing that it was "broke". Once I fixed it I filled it with dirt and then he proceeded to dump it out announcing that it was "too dirty".


I really should have dumped the bag of potting soil out and let Lauren and the little ones play in it, because that is all they really wanted to do. Maybe next week they can haul some dirt in some dump trucks.


A boy and his trucks! I love this picture.

Kristen and Lauren had their first science "experiment". This year we learning about the animals God created on the fifth day...more specifically the animals that fly. They had to make gliders. One with long narrow wings (Kristen made this one) and one with short wide wings (Lauren made this one). They had to come up with a hypothesis on which one they thought would fly the furthest. Kristen put a lot of thought in her hypothesis. Lauren just copied what Kristen said.


Kristen's went further because her wings were more narrow so there wasn't as much drag (one of their vocabulary words for the unit) on her wings as Lauren's wings had. Of course someone always gets upset when they loose (the reason why Lauren isn't smiling), so we had to end up making two with narrow wings. 

They also made a field notebook that they will be using to record their findings of birds and insects in our area.



We also made some fun snacks and had lots of fun learning this week. 



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