Our Week After Valentine's Day

You know how I keep hoping we'll start getting more schoolwork done?  Yeah, not so much.

On the up side, free time gives kids the chance to be creative.

In addition to the monster truck here, Eli also built a hatchet, in honor of the book series he's been reading.

Every year, we do conversation heart math on Valentine's Day.

The kids don't mind Saturday schoolwork so much if it involves eating candy!  Graphing, sorting, counting, reading...  Lots of ways to "carpe perceptum" (seize the learning opportunity) with this activity that has become a tradition.  With a lot of things getting pared back or set aside in this difficult season, I'm glad I made the effort to pick up a couple bags of hearts for the kids.  When your high schoolers willingly participate, that says something.

I started printing a counting bear page for Katie, and the printer ink ran out, so it turned into a coloring page instead!  (After I changed the ink, I reprinted the pages, and will be using them to help her learn matching and patterns soon.)

This week, we learned about crests.  The boys designed their own.

Jack has crossed swords and a cross on a green background.

Eli went with a wolf and a cobra on silver.  Unfortunately, our silver Sharpie started dying, so the left side is more silver than the right side.

Jack was using Katie for a pillow, and Katie told me to take a picture.

This week in art, we watched our Home Art Studio DVD and learned how to make Name Aliens.

Eli tracing his folded name to make the "reflection" which causes the two halves to be symmetrical.

Jack missed the "touching the line" part, so he ended up with two monsters.  Now that I see this, I'm not entirely sure I had his right side up when I took this picture.

We did a review of money with a neat new book.  After the boys were done with it, I gave the play money to the girls to play with in their purses.  Both of them love to squirrel things away in bags and backpacks.  (Speaking of backpacks, I have the cutest thing to show you, coming soon!)

I know I keep saying this, but hopefully next week we'll get our groove back.  After we finish the curriculum week we're (still!) working on, we get to start learning about China, which, of course, is one of my favorite topics.  I only wish Hannah were off track so she could be home to enjoy it with us.


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