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.

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 2 Wrap Up

We're still on our death beds with this plague but we managed to finish school anyway. Yay us!

I've mentioned before that Friday's are not scheduled in Winter Promise, they want you to use the day for any catching up on projects that need to be done.....since we did all our projects during the week all we had left was Stuffie's language arts and spelling tests, both kid's math tests and science.

I'm surprised to find science being the one subject this year that keeps getting skipped and left till Friday. Normally I save that honor for read alouds.....I'm sure it has something to do with how it's scheduled last in the day....anyway it was simple stuff like the cross-word....

and the mini books....

 which we added to the sun collage page because I didn't have any magazines on hand to cut collage pictures out of because I threw them all in the recycling can Tuesday (have I mentioned that I have a habit of throwing everything away?)

Stuffie and I did some more talking about verbs in First Language Lessons which is the best LA program EVER! I mean it!

I wish I had known about it when I started with Kung Fu. If I had maybe he would be using capital letters when spelling United States on his test this week....maybe.

I marked it wrong even though he spelled it right because it's not right if you don't capitalize....sorry about your luck. ha! Still a B is OK in our neck of the woods.
Stuffie didn't do to shabby either....

she got a sticker because she made all her letters fit correctly on the line for every word...we've been working on that and it made me happy :) I mean just look at the T in tug! beautiful!

Math was successful as well this week......

                                           yay Kung Fu!! Double stickers for 100%

and here's Stuffie's

                                           awesome!

At lunch today I casually asked them some questions about history, for example "Can you tell me about the Line of Demarcation?" and "Who was St.Brendan? Leif Ericsson? Christoper Columbus?" Kung Fu knew everything and Stuffie answered "I don't know." to everything. sigh.

Next week both kids have camp so we are taking the week off from school....I'm hoping our friend at Giggly Girls will be our guest one day and tell us how things are going with 'Children Around The World'.

I'm going to spend my child free time at Starbucks..... with my nook....it's going to be awesome!

All day I thought it was Friday.....

I hate it when that happens. The boy had worked ahead on some of his books and it confused my poor sick brain. I'm also still confused by WP's choice to teach about Native Homes and Explorers in the same Unit. They should have just used Time Traveler and followed up with similar information in some different books. But I digress....

Today we stared learning about the Explorers to the New World....St.Brendan, Leif Ericsson, and Christopher Columbus. It was a good bit of reading in the Time Traveler....

                                3 pages was quite a jump from the one and a half we've been used too....

We would pause between each explorer and fill out a mini book about them, when they explored, what they found......you get the idea. They will go into our big project at the end of the unit.....

                                            each book has a cover with the explorer's picture....

We also made a mini book on the Line Of Demarcation....it too will be added to our project.

The Time Traveler has several options when choosing what to print. You can print the text like you see here or you can have blank lines for the child to fill in, in some cases they have print or cursive which is nice when working with 2 kids 3 grades apart.

Since we are all so sick and just sitting around here like blobs waiting for this plague to pass I figured I'd take advantage of their lethargy and throw another activity in......

We made our own glow in the dark constellations! All we needed was black felt, chalk and GITD puffy paint....they had everything we needed in AC Moore. The kids really enjoyed making them.

                                Time Traveler prints out the constellation and you copy it on to the felt......

Then you follow along over top of your copy with the paint......watch little ones who like to squeeze things to hard....lol!
Here are the finished constellations which they can hang in their rooms and dream about the Explorers following the stars and their dreams......and as an added bonus they glow in the dark! fun!

                                    the man boy picked Hercules......color me surprised.

                                            Pegasus? lol she's so predictable....I love her

Here's mine....I know it's awesome right?!

We also made this with a left over piece.....much fun was had by all......

My sweet angel baby also wrote this note to God.....I know it made His day even more than it made mine!

                       precious angel child...God Bless her forever....amen.

The boy got a 90 on his spelling......holla!

We fizzled out around 2:30 so we put on a documentary suggested in the instructor's guide that conveniently enough was on instant view from Netflix.

Some of the paintings pictured in the documentary were on the mini books that I showed you today and the boy noticed right away so that was neat. Stuffie bailed on the viewing and made clothes for her tiny toy dogs, but the boy stayed till the end and declared it OK.

Last but not least here is the promised photo of the ti-pi.....everyone LOVES it and I'm thinking I'll cherish it for a long time to come.......

                                                               so cool!

Stuffie's 3 panels.....love the animals!

Kung Fu's half, love the water and the totem pole.

The total awesomeness of this ti-pi makes me almost forget what I paid for the trades and Crafts kit....almost...