Our Second Week of School

I seem to be all out of witty titles this morning.  Here we are, another weekend is here, and I'm blinking at the whirlwind that was the past week.

Katie recently presented me with this note.  Melt my heart!  Her writing is really coming along, and she loves to draw, too.  Even though last year was what I called, "half-assed kindergarten," I really feel she's going to do fine with first grade materials this year.  She finished her K math book the first week of school, and is zipping through MUS Alpha with no problems.  She's on track to finish her K spelling book and start Spelling You See level B in a few weeks.

One of the nice things about starting school up again is ART!  This week, we did the next project from ArtAchieve, which we reviewed a few months ago.

While working on their pictures, we listened to African music from SmartKidz Media, which was another review product.  Reviewing has really enriched our homeschool.

After drawing and coloring, they wadded up their pictures, then smoothed them out and painted over them.

Here are Jack and Hannah's finished Tanzanian Kitenge Tree pictures.  The crinkled effect was supposed to mimic batik fabrics.  I think if Jack had done the crayon part darker, the paint would have resisted better.

One of the fire trucks needed some work done on it, and when it was finished, Paul picked it up.  The truck hung out at our house for a few hours before it was time for him to head in to work with it.

Jack got to start the fire truck.  My kids have had a lot of exposure to fire apparatus over the years, but this is the first time one of them has actually turned one on by themselves.

Our Little Friends are back with their mama now.  The leggings that I showed in last week's post turned out to be a little bit too big for them.

Nightgowns too small, leggings too big...  Ah well.  They're cute enough to pull of a rolled waistband, right?

Also from the sewing room.  Katie got a new nightgown when I realized that the Hello Kitty ones were small enough that they'd have fit our little guests, but Katie was still wearing them.  More than 2 years after I made them for her.  I have another one cut out for her, but I haven't managed to sew it together yet.

Big news for this guy this week!  Josiah has enlisted in the US Army Reserves, and will be leaving this month for boot camp!

I took Josiah and Sam out to dinner to celebrate.  I feel very... safe when I walk around between these guys.

You know those linky parties where you see all sorts of neat ideas, but most of them you never actually do?  Well, I saw the fingerprint dandelion on one of those, and printed it and we got out the stamp pad and did it!  I thought they turned out cute.

Eli's team had football pictures last weekend.  I've got sports pics of most of the kids now, and I need to come up with some way to display them.  Right now, most of them are taped up on the back of a bookcase that separates the sewing room from the master bedroom.  I need a blank wall and a bunch of matching frames.

Our California history book is backordered, but we've been working through a California coloring book, and we read about the Gold Rush in Story of the World this week.

You remember the Can Do Cubes I recently shared about?

We like them a lot, and everyone played with them as they passed through the school room, so I decided to get the word version.

We spent some time building, making sentences, and just enjoying the cubes.

Then we sorted them into "noun, verb, or other" bags.  We'll get more complex with this as we go along, but it was a fun way to begin.

Our Home Art Studio project this week was Asian Landscape.  We listened to Chinese music as we worked on it.

First, we drew our picture with Sharpies.  Then we colored them with watercolor pencils.

If you haven't played with watercolor pencils yet, you're missing out!  You color (left) and then you brush water over your picture to turn the pencil into paint (right).

Katie did this one with us, too.  Even though this is the "5th grade" art DVD, I find that the projects really appeal to a wide variety of ages, both younger and older than the suggested grade.  When we reviewed the 2nd grade DVD, Eli was in 8th grade, and it was not at all too "babyish" for him.

Thursday has become our library day, since the library is only open a couple days a week in the mornings.  We had lunch at the park and played for a while before going in to return last week's books and check out new ones.

We had more books than my card limit, so Jack got his first library card!  We usually get the kids their own card when they turn 12.  Jack turned 12 in April, so this worked out perfect for us.

Friday night was a home game, so we got all purpled up and went to watch Eli play.

Brianna (kneeling) is one of the water girls for the team.

And there's Eli.  Both JV and Varsity won their games this week.

Jack was more excited about the half time snacks I brought than anything else.

The girls mostly played in the dirt.

If you look closely, you can see Eli's team in the reflection of Josiah's glasses.  This will likely be the only game Josiah gets to see, since he's leaving soon.

On our way home, we stopped to pick up sandwiches for a late dinner, and the firefighters were there, doing the same thing.  One of the guys gave the girls sticker badges.  Jack (who got to start a fire truck just a few days prior) wasn't interested in a sticker.

Even though summer, the season of free play, is over, I'm happy to see free play still happening.

We also went to an adoptive families picnic, but I didn't take a single picture while we were there.  It was great to sit and talk with other parents who "get" adoption, and it was good for the kids to see other families like ours.  I got to see a couple friends I haven't seen in a while, and that was really nice.

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