Sunday, January 26, 2014

Weekly Wrap-up - January 26



Can I just say, that I am REALLY done with winter this year! On the positive side, when it's too cold to go outside, it gives us more time for school.

Little Bit is LOVING doing Kinderbach! (affiliate link). Since we've done it before, she's moving quickly through these first few weeks, we're already on week 6 :) I was amused by the mischievous look on her face when she wanted me to take a picture of "Dodi's houses" on the piano.
The bigger kids continue to enjoy Chemistry and Physics. This week included learning about chain reactions by making a domino chain. They had so much fun, that we "paused" the science lesson and they spent the rest of school time that day, making domino chains. The 91 dominoes in the set we borrowed from Mama and Papa was declared too small, when divided 3 ways.  They did better than I expected at NOT bumping into the table and knocking each others' dominoes down.
This week also brought the end of the American History that we've been moving through for the past 2 1/2+ years! This fall, as we were looking at where we were, and where we wanted to be, and the fact that we were getting kind of antsy to also learn world history . . . we decided to finish up American History up to the start of WWI, and then figure that we will cover WWI to the present, in World History, since communication and transportation meant that America and the rest of the world were all jumbled together by then anyway. So, this week was the last couple books leading up to WWI. 

One of the suggestions for this winter's unit was to start planning a "Sanctuary garden" . . . a garden space to go read and pray and just be peaceful. BUT, this winter has been entirely too cold and snowy to even figure out where we want to put said garden. . . FINALLY this week, while still bitterly cold, it was at least not snow-covered, not raining, and not muddy. So we went exploring. Or, more accurately, I sent the kids out exploring . . . they found a nice space, in the "weeds" (where we don't mow) which means, if we can "reclaim" it, and keep the space itself from over-growing, it won't be something Daddy has to mow around, which he'll appreciate :) It doesn't look like much now, but it's pretty much a blank slate, near the creek for the peaceful sound and sight of the rushing water, but I don't THINK it will flood under normal circumstances. Lexie took a bunch of pictures so we can at least start talking about it, and deciding what we want to do when it's warm enough to do anything outside :) 

It's a good thing we scouted out the garden site when we did, because the next day brought MORE snow, sigh . . . 

Music lessons continue to focus on Ashlyn finishing up book 1. The current plan is that she and Lexie will play some of the songs together, so it's influencing Lexie's lessons as well. Lexie's also started reading music, and composing, so she's excited about that too :) 

Our lovely friend, Miss Denise, brought the girls a TON of balloons from a party she'd helped organize last weekend. They had fun throwing them around and such all week, and then, as the week came to an end, and we were getting ready to leave for a weekend at Mama and Papa's, I suggested that they have a fun popping party and pop all the balloons since they were starting to lose air anyway, and would probably lose more air before we got home. Plus, how often to you get to pop 15+ balloons in one fell swoop? :) So, they piled them all in the school room and jumped on them and generally had great fun! 

Friday we headed to Mama and Papa's for the weekend.

Little Bit wasn't sure about going to Mama and Papa's church, even after her sisters told her that Miss Janelle (the Kindergarten Sabbath School teacher) is the best Sabbath School teacher EVAR! We finally convinced her to at least give it a try, and she discovered that her sisters were right! Especially since Miss Janelle's Sabbath School has SNACKS! The big girls were somewhat apprehensive about going to their class, since it was a different teacher since last time we'd been to Mama and Papa's church, but they decided it was ok too, since it included, not just snacks, but breakfast! (vegetarian "pigs" in a blanket, and orange juice). They did comment that they thought it was "weird" that the girls all sat on one side of the room, and the boys on the other, hee hee. I told them that's because, in Juniors, boys still have "cooties".

Sabbath afternoon we visited Miss Vicki and Mr. Ron. After we'd been there a few minutes, Mr. Ron made his best guess as to which twin was which, and got it right (whether he "knew" or got lucky, is still up for debate). He's also an identical twin, and claims that that gives him special powers to just "know" . . . so now the girls are plotting all the things they can do to trip him up and make sure he can't tell them apart next time we see him LOL.  1 year old, L, is loving to give "kisses" so spent the afternoon showering us all with kisses. I couldn't resist, texting Daddy last night to tell him that his daughters had spent the afternoon getting lots of kisses from "a very attractive boy", hee hee. 

So that was our week. Apparently, at home we got even MORE snow, yesterday, sigh . . . 


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