HURRICANE!!!!!

or......This is the I've used so much paper for school this week I'm afraid to go near a forest. The trees might try and get their revenge.....BLOG!

We've finished week 4 and everything has been checked! I'm feeling really good about that!

The first read aloud was awesome. The kids LOVED it. They are afraid Sign of the Beaver is going to be lame. The reasoning is that Naya Nuki was so good because they could trick us into thinking the next one will be good too....we'll see. Right now we can see that that last sentence was just.... awkward.

                                               read it! I command you!


In other Language Arts news....Stuffie was supposed to fill in the blanks of a story with her spelling words. She decided to do it "Mad Libs Style" and just put her spelling words in any spot that struck her fancy. Then she read it aloud to us and was very pleased with it's ridiculousness.

 and really...who cares as long as she's practicing her spelling words? Plus she did get an A on her test....

                                                        YAY!

And guess who the lucky recipient of the Bible verse is for the 2nd week in a row....

I'll give you a hint...it starts with 'L' and ends in 'eigh'.


Now we can get to the parts where I made trees weep. Time Traveler is the spine of our History this year and they have a huge amount of projects to reinforce what we're reading. This week we made a game called 'High and Dry' it started out like this.....

Handy thing that laminator.....did you know laminator isn't a word? It's true my spell check just told me. And I told my spell check to shut it!
Anyway the game board is super cute with spaces like this

                                           YIKES! Cannibals!
 And like this......

                                     Stuffie the non eater is afraid she's going to get The Scurvey....(spell check says that scurvey isn't a word either....stuff it spell check!)

So I was at that point when I realized I didn't color the board.....DANG IT! So I started all over again and this is what we got.....

We haven't played yet. we're saving it for when the power goes out. So I'll review it another time.

I also made an enemy of the trees by printing out 2 card stock (2 words ) Pueblo's......

It's the gun toting, disease carring Spaniards vs. the peaceful people of the Pueblo.....the kids couldn't wait to play "Pueblo Wars" after supper and I have the picture to prove it!

The Spanish kicked ass and took names...poor Puebloians (also not a word). I bet they'd give those conquistadors a run for their money if they tried that crap now. Bust a cap Pueblo....bust a cap.

We studied Venus this week in Science. They made an awesome volcano of facts about Venus. I love the blank spaces where they can really let their creative juices flow....

Caution Hot! That place is covered in LIQUID HOT MAGMA! for realz.....

I'm just about to the point where I'm going to toss not only the State Study but also the Bible.... Look at what he had to read this week....

2nd Timothy 4:9-22 you should read it and then tell me if it makes any sense on God's beautiful Earth to assign that passage...OUT OF ALL THE PASSAGES IN THE ENTIRE BIBLE.....for a 10 year old's Bible study. I had to help him with the questions.

I don't mind helping my child however I do mind that WP picked such a weird passage to emphasize "Helping Others" After all they do know they are writing for children....don't they??? Maybe  not??? I dunno?

Look at how cute the illustrations are in Stuffie's Catechism.....

 I should break out Kung Fu's catechism and let him read it again....at least he'd learn something.....

Kung Fu's getting some Bible references in Math. Thank goodness the other subjects can help pick up the slack...

He's a good mathematician that boy.... just sits down with the book and plows right through....

thank you precious child for understanding fractions....and asking Papa when you're stumped!

Thank you for gluing the figures into the Timeline book as well....

you're my new favorite son! For realz.

We also murdered a few trees to make out 3D Maps of the French Explorers....

This one is Stuffie's because she LOVES Beavers and it had a Beaver to color and she colored it red!

Kung Fu chose the smallest one with the least need for multiple colors. That's my boy!

What did't get mentioned in the above information is that we have 2 printers. One to print on card stock (2words) because our laser printer doesn't like the thick paper. SEVERAL times I printed something on regular paper that was supposed to be printed on card stock (2words) because our laser printer is the default printer and I forgot to select the other one....SEVERAL TIMES- poor poor trees...sorry trees.

So that's our week. Stuffie declared the "New School" -FUN!- today....I love the positive feed back. 4 weeks down 32 more weeks to go!

The I got an i-pod and have been too distracted to blog....MEGA BLOG!!!

It's true. I've smiled, cajoled, winked, and shimmied my way into an i-pod touch. And it's AMAZING! How did I ever do anything before?! And I'm certainly not doing anything now unless you count buying music at an alarming rate and playing Words With Friends until way past my bed time.

I am finding time to homeschool. To prove it here's what we've been up to....

Science continues to be the subject that gets skipped on busy days. I'm not sure why that keeps happening but I'm working on a solution. In the mean time we make up what we've missed on the weekends or in the evening. Here's Papa and the brats making an eclipse in our living room..... because we are just that powerful. (insert maniacal laughter)

it really worked and helped them to understand that the whole entire world doesn't get covered in darkness at the same time.

We are continuing to work on our big end of the unit project.  We're adding mini books like drunken sailors....

And Papa and I got started on the maps.

It's a pretty involved process so we decided to make them for the kids. Making 2 of everything is kind of a drag but the maps are super cool with the transparency overlays of the route the explorer took so in the end it will be worth it. I hope.....

We made a 3D interactive map of Columbus' voyages....I cut out the path he traveled and then you could put the ships in and sail them...so cute!

we continued to add pictures to the Timeline....

As you can see we're running out of room. I'm wondering what it's going to look like by the end of the week....


One of their favorite things they made last week were these Sea Monster pop-ups. I think they came out AWESOME!

                                           Stuffie's

                                           Kung Fu's


Stuffie continues to struggle at Math. I have to sit next to her and walk her through every single problem. She understands the mechanics of how to do the problems she just doesn't want to waste valuable day dreaming time actually figuring them out.....the poor dear.....

Kung Fu solved the first case in his Language Arts workbook. It was neat. I hope he continues to enjoy it.
                                           It's Amsterdam!


We squeezed in a field trip to the Mariner's Museum. They have a really awesome section just about explorers. They were totally jazzed at seeing the different navigational tools we studied. Stuffie spent a while playing the game about what you should bring on your journey to prevent your crew from getting scurvy.  It was neat to help them see that these aren't just stories I'm reading to them....

Love the models of Columbus' ships....so neat! The Santa Maria even had a mini Columbus standing on the deck!

Stuffie wrote out her verse for handwriting. The idea is for her to do her best and give it away as a gift. This week her God-Mother Leigh was the lucky winner. Because of the fish boarder.

                             I love how close Leigh and Stuffie are.

They did great on their spelling tests and paragraph writing too.....

They have also taken to writing their 'play' names on their papers. I never know who I'm going to be grading any more....it can be unsettling.... especially when I can't even say the name at the top of the page....

So that's me pretty much all caught up. Today we're going to make a Pueblo out of card stock (it's 2 words card stock) and  I bet that it going to be a blast.....no really. Almost as much fun as Kung Fu's new reader....

It's about a GIRL!!! GAG!


 I'll leave you with this.....

i-pods keep girls quiet...it works the same on boys....especially when they are playing Fruit Ninja.

Wednesday or...... I'm so glad it's almost Friday!

Last night after I blogged I felt like maybe blogging everyday or nearly everyday wasn't going to work out....I mean it was a pretty lame blog and as tired and stressed out as I was it was also a burden to even do it.....then I remembered that Winter Promise would always let me down and in fact  today I can report that they have! YAY! State Studies was a real pip and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you! And I'm only going to make you wait a little while into the blog for the big reveal.....

This morning Kung Fu was invited to go up to the karate school and help out. There was a bus load of kids coming in for a field trip. He was very happy and excited to be helping out. The child really has a passion for teaching and I hope he never loses it.

Needless to say the morning activities threw a wrench in our school day. They did manage to get their math done while we were there so I was happy about that.

I decided that the only work that absolutely had to get done today was the 5 day stuff like Bible, Language Arts, Math and Science. I also did the State Study with them and read Naya Nuki.

The State Study was another WP fail.....

See all those questions? Of course you do! I even put a close up shot of them for you. Yeah well the answers to those questions were NOT in the reading he had to do to answer them. One or two of them were covered in the reading. The rest he figured out with deductive reasoning. And God Bless him he never complained or said a word. He just handed me the book and when I looked it over and compared it to the reading sections I discovered that the answers weren't there. Really Winter Promise??? REALLY? That's a dirty trick to play on a boy. This is only our second State Study and I'm already thinking about tossing it out the window.

Stuffie's state stuff consists of a couple of things I picked up in the Target dollar spot, plus she sits in on the reading....

A card with a map one one side and some facts on the other and then half a workbook page with an activity and a space to copy the name of the state...easy peasy and look Mom no annoying questions without answers!

In a few weeks I'm going to bust out The Scrambled States of America game that I've been hoarding...it should be fun. It got great reviews on amazon....
http://www.amazon.com/Gamewright-5505-Scrambled-States/dp/B0009XBY1W/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1313621374&sr=1-1

They both finally seem to be getting the hang of Writing With Ease....it's been touch and go these past couple of weeks and I honestly think their brains had to be trained....today was a breeze and I'm so relieved.

Kung Fu's is on the top. His selection just happened to be about The Boston Tea Party which as you know happened in Massachusetts- neat-O ! Stuffies was an excerpt from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle which is one of her favorite books...she drew a picture of dirty Patsy...

She was cracking herself up..."look Mom I made her all goth!" hahahaha....I'd never seen an 'after/before' picture but I was entertained none the less!

Science continues to float my boat. I wasn't expecting all the 'young Earth' stuff but I usually just skip it. I don't really care what age the Earth is and I don't go for a literal translation of the Bilbe  timeline.......I know He made it and that's good enough for little old me. Any way they did the mini book page....

we've got one more mini book for later in the week...And Stuffie added some pictures to her notebook....I'm glad she got the one with the extra drawing space (although I continue to be baffled as to why exactly they are different)

                                it's Mercury, Earth, and the moon......i like it!

First Language Lessons had a narration today and this goes right along with doing a summary in Writing With Ease which was good because she needs a ton of practice in summarizing a story instead of just retelling it. I also bet this skill is going to come in handy for book reports and report writing in the future...

Do you LOVE the camel and the palm tree? Her drawings always make me smile.

After getting stuff done we had time to run over to AC Moore and make their Wednesday craft....Kung Fu made a space shuttle which was a nice snap tight model and he put it together almost entirely on his own...

And Stuffie was going to make a friendship bracelet....except it was so difficult that the woman running the craft table couldn't even explain how to do it or show us....so we brought it home to let Papa have a go at it and if that doesn't work we're going to use the thread and find easier instructions elsewhere....

After that we went to Home Depot with Papa  where we got lights to replace all the burned out ones in my kitchen...it's lit up like the 4th of July in there and I just spent the last 20 minutes spraying down the cabinet doors I thought were clean and weren't ....gag.

......and if you're wondering what I do while they are reading and writing.....

I'm s-l-o-w-l-y working my way through this awesome Bible study on the book of John. I can't say enough good things about it. It's really shown me a more personal side of Christ and I'm learning a TON.

That is when I'm not playing Words with Friends....

Just keeping it real people....

It's been a looooong day.

and I'm tired so this is going to be short and to the point.

Kung Fu continues to have an attitude...maybe he thinks one day he'll wake up and I'll miraculously care that he doesn't want to write paragraphs? I can assure you that's not going to happen. In the mean time he's plugging right along and at least it's a topic he's interested in...The Civil War.

We had fun doing History today. I got out the big timeline and they found Columbus and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella....

We made two more mini books for our end of the unit project....

It's so interesting to learn about the fates of the explorers.....so far none of them has died peacefully in their beds.

They also made travel brochures to 'the new land' ......Stuffie chose Florida

she's trying to lure me there with sandy beaches, jumping dolphins and scaly fish....she's not going to trick me.


And Kung Fu chose Newfoundland.....

They have great fishing and lots of trees....I'm not being tricked into going there either....

They are still studying the same painting...today they had the draw their own versions....

Stuffie did the one with the flag....I love the faces and all the emotion they convey. I like how Kung Fu drew the hill around the people and of course the guy shooting the gun is awesome!

We didn't get to the State Study or Naya Nuki today.....we spent too much time making brochures and looking at the timeline.....
tomorrow he's got some instructing to do in the morning so I'm sure we'll get even more behind....
makes me glad WP doesn't schedule Friday's

Week Three, Day One -or- Someone Needs to Proof Read......

My proof reading story is funny and we'll get to that in a minute...I like to make Stef wait for it....In the mean time we were back to school today and here's how it went......

It was hard to get Kung Fu motivated today. He just wasn't feeling it which reinforced my decision not to take off weeks like we did last year....bet he's rethinking the attitude after that little announcement.

Time Traveler was about John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci....we made these nifty mini books to add to our end of the unit project.....

We also had to add to our Timeline book. This is the first week we've used it since there were no figures in week one and I forgot to do it in week two. I had the figures all printed out but somehow I forgot. Anyway as you recall the pages are printed on heavy cardstock and you must purchase the binder and then set it up so the pages face eachother and the blank pages are to be used for additional projects that I guess you'd make up but as you know I don't make it up....I make people make it up for me and pay them....but I digress.....

                                       Bed head and glue sticks....OH MY!

There is no actual line in this time line book, the pages are titled with important dates and you glue the picture in. I don't dislike it, it's just new for me.....

I actually have my own really nifty timeline that I'm going to bust out tomorrow so they can see how it looks in relation to the rest of history.....they'll love it.

Next we had our picture studies, which is actually a WP publication so you know it was a lark!

They want us to add John Trumbull to the time line, but they don't give his dates...they give the dates when he painted certain paintings but not his life span dates....they continue to amaze me. Luckily I know about wiki and I wiki'ed him and then printed out a picture for the timeline.....

In week two the kids were bored of this painting and hoping to move on....we're still at it.....mybe next week?

After Picture Studies we got to read about how poor Naya Nuki got chased up a tree by a bear...that kid can't catch a break.

We also started out new State Study. I forgot to tell you that I got an envelope last week from WP. That sucker was taped shut six ways till Sunday and it was an event just getting it out of the envelope with out tearing the contents....

It was the new schedule to go with the states facts book I got in the mail from them after pitching a fit the first week of school. I can't believe sometimes that I pay money for this stuff....

Harvard and basketball are among Massachusetts' claims to fame.....

Something else that amused me was the suggestion that we watch the documentary on Columbus that we watched in week two...you know, when we studied Columbus....

I was happy to be able to check that off tho' cuz I'm a checker.

Stuffie blew me away during First language Lessons today by remembering The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rosetti....that was the 1st poem she learned last year and she still remembered it. She also got to make fun sentences ....

'Candy is dangerous'-she cracks herself up......

Now we get to the good part.....WP's Language Arts for Kung Fu. oh my I wish they had a proof reader that could read....

Read sentence 6.....The sly rascal and escapee WAS giving the police a clue. Really? They WAS? Holy moly WP this is a grammar book could we get with the program and actually proof read before we hand it out to the kiddies. GEESH!
That being said we did cross one more city off our list. Kung Fu is looking forward to solving the mystery and with 2 cities left I'm guessing it will be soon.

Math was an adventure as usual. I wish you could sit next to Stuffie and see how difficult it is for her to focus. I can literally see the millions of thoughts flashing before her eyes as she's trying to discern 6+2 and none of those thoughts are about numbers.

If I wasn't sitting right next to her directing her every pencil stroke she'd still be working on math at bedtime'

We wrapped up the day with science. Our new planet is Mercury. I really love Apologia Astronomy...have I mentioned that already?

After school we went to the pool and then we ran errands and now I'm really tired....

Tomorrow's another fun day!