Our Labor Day Week

On Labor Day, Zach and Heather and Brayden came over for a visit.

Almost all my kids.  Just missing Annaliese, who will hopefully be able to come for a visit before Josiah takes off for boot camp.

Active duty Air Force, almost Army reserves, and soon to be active duty Marines.  I'm thinking if we can talk Eli into joining the Navy, we should get our taxes waived.  I doubt Uncle Sam will agree with me, but it seems like we ought to get some sort of reward for providing all 4 branches of the military with strong and handsome recruits.  

Zach's sweet little family.

These guys had a great time playing together.

 Imagine kissy noises, and you'll understand the trepidation Katie is expressing.

Out to lunch with (almost) the whole family.

We actually homeschooled Labor Day morning, since Brianna and Eli were at school for football practice anyway.  It was pretty much a regular morning, just a little abbreviated.

Our first art project this week, was inspired by the watercolor basics video from See The Light.  We have reviewed a couple of their DVDs in the past, so I'm on their email list, and I thought the watercolor basics video might be helpful, since we tend to have seepage and blending issues with watercolors.  We used watercolors from a tube (as instructed) for these.  I think I want to try dripping our liquid watercolors onto wet paper now because of this project.

Our second art project this week was from ArtAchieve (see our review).  We did lesson 9, The Plate From Nepal, and we listened to Nepali instrumental music from YouTube.

Jack's still not crazy about this program, but Hannah enjoys it.

I felt like the kids weren't getting enough geography last year, so this year, we're working through geography books.  Katie is doing Beginning Geography, and we're working on things like maps, directions, symbols, etc.  It's a K-2 level book, and it's definitely challenging her.

Jack and Hannah are working through Daily Geography Practice.  We're actually working through it faster than suggested.  Each week, there's a lesson, a map, and 2 questions for each day of the week, that all refer back to the map.  The way we've been using it, we do M-W (6 questions total) one day, then Th-F and the "challenge" question the next day.  So even though we just finished up our 3rd week of school, Hannah and Jack have completed 6 weeks in their geography book.  This is a good thing, because that means that when they're doing "light schoolwork" for 2 weeks in November, they can drop geography and not get "behind."  More about that later.

We did a little "community service" this week!  We provided bag lunches for Eli's football team, and the kids helped me by decorating the lunch bags.

They also helped me pack the bags into boxes and distribute the non-perishables into the bags.

The next day, we made 36 sandwiches, assembly line style.  Let's hear it for mayo and mustard in squeeze bottles!

Eventually, all the lunches were packed up into 4 containers.

And we dropped them off at the school for the players to eat on the bus to their away game.

We have been hitting the library on Thursdays, and I really hope we can keep it up this year.  We used to go to the library all the time when the big kids were little, and I feel like the middle/little kids got short changed when we stopped doing that.

The kids have eclectic tastes in books, and I throw a few things into the bag each week, to provide other interesting options, once they finish their choices.  (Not pictured are the books they started reading in the car.)

Of course, having a park next door to the library makes it an even more popular choice with these guys.

Jack has started speech therapy.  The girls and I hang out in the school library while he is with the therapist in another building.

As a junior, Brianna is "TA" during one class period (teacher's assistant).  After hearing that she does things like grade papers and make photocopies, I think I need a TA around here!  My printer upstairs in the school room does not print any more (although it does still scan), so I have to make photocopies downstairs.  Which is not a big deal when I'm on my game and I make copies for the coming week over the weekend.  But for those times when I don't, chaos seems to always break out in the school room when I disappear to make copies.  I think I might need to rearrange the school room and change printers at some point, but I'm waiting until we can figure out if we can fit the other computer up here after Josiah goes to boot camp.  It would be helpful to be able to have the kids work on a computer without me losing my desk.

This coming week, we're off to Shriners again, this time casting Hannah for a new leg.

This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!