Weekly wrap up 17

This has been the week of getting back to normal after Christmas vacation.  A week of fun and trying hard to reign it in and get some school work done.   

Brianna used her stocking stuffer duct tape to make a bow.  

Eli has been making the pages of his airplane a day calendar.  

We learned about complimentary colors in art.

Miss Hannah built a spectacular block tower and asked me to take a picture of it.  

Katie and Luke received the center and right dolls in the mail this week from the same sweet mama who made Hannah's (left) doll when we brought her home 3 years ago.  

We learned the ancient Egyptian game of Senet.  But with our own personal spin, we played with counting bears, 'cuz that's how we roll.  (Speaking of roll, we used dice.  I'm too lazy to make the sticks.  It works for us.)  

Brianna continues to plug away at a new typing program.  

Eli built another EEME kit.  Seriously, I'm so glad I subscribed to this.  Once a month, he gets a project.  The instructions are all by YouTube, so he's completely independent.  He's learning things I never would have thought to teach him.  I love it!  

I've mentioned the construction in the field behind our house.  It started before we went to China.  This week it has gotten more interesting.  

We have actual structures going up now.  

I felt a little like a creepy stalker taking this picture, but I was playing with my new camera.

Same guy.  You can see how well it zooms.  These were taken from a bedroom window.  

I am really hoping to homeschool Hannah next year, so I've been making an effort to have her spend time in the school room with us while she's off track.  

We finished our schoolwork on Friday morning and got out one of our new Magic School Bus science kits from Educents.  More pictures coming later.  

My girlies have been getting into the mood for CNY by coloring Chinese New Year color pages from Panda Express.  

We stopped at the library to drop off books after taking the high schoolers to school.  Yes, that's our library basket.  All this time, I've been putting our books in bags to return.  This morning, I grabbed the whole basket.  I think I like this better than multiple bags, but I'm not sure how well the basket will hold up to being hauled in and out of the car.  

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Weekly Wrap Up Homeschool Week 5

More on Egypt and pyramids and such this week.

We found a website where you can type and it shows the Egyptian hieroglyphic counterparts on the screen.  Very cool!  

We created pyramid mazes in art.

Eli built his Nanoblock Giza's Big Pyramid (affiliate link).   

He had such fun with the Nanoblock sets he made last year, I'm glad I could get this one for him this year.  There are a couple sets that may be appropriate next year if he still has interest in them.  

Brianna has a sense of humor.  See the green block in the picture?  "Limestone."

Eli taking a blank map of the Middle East and drawing in current political borders.  

We're working on memorizing the books of the Old Testament.  (Eli captured this "moment," hence the huh? expression.)  

Bright eyed Jack's pyramid drawing.

Brianna multi-tasking.  She usually knits while I read aloud to the kids.  Now she even knits when she's reading to herself.  I'm in awe, since I can't knit at all.  

Also this week, Luke said goodbye to one of his therapists, who is moving away. 

Next week, we're looking forward to starting a new wellness curriculum, learning about Abraham, and finishing our dinosaur book.  We also have a trip to the pumpkin patch, a play date, Luke's physical therapy, hearing tests at the audiologist for both Hannah (failed her school physical hearing exam) and Lukey, Luke's feeding therapy, and our first Friday art class at the library.  Sounds like A LOT of activity.  It will be interesting to see how this all works out.

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Moon Festival & Weekly Wrap Up 4

Starting off our study of Ancient Egypt!  

As a treat, I got the kids a pyramid puzzle, which Brianna seems to be the only one capable of doing.  

Building pyramids from clay and straws.  You can see the completed puzzle here, as well.  Brianna's straw pyramid has 4 sides.

Eli's straw pyramid has 5 sides.

Then we made cardstock pyramids and covered them in glue and sand.  We had to mix colors to get just the right shade of sand.

Eli added trees to his pyramid.

Brianna models the double crown of Menes.

We are working on memorizing the books of the Bible this year.  I found these bookmarks online, and we cut them out and added our own ribbons to them.  I saw this, too, but I just couldn't bring myself to write on our Legos.

Remember all the flags from last year?  These are modern Egyptian flags, but since the kids had enjoyed the flag part of last year so much, I thought they'd like these.  

I'm glad we get to spend a decent amount of time on Egypt this year.  Some of the countries we hit last year, I could have done way more than 2 weeks in, but I felt like I had to stick to the schedule.  It's good; we got through the whole year and learned about many interesting countries instead of just a few, but I can certainly understand families that dig in and spend more time on each place.  

We made "cuneiform" tablets of cookie dough.

Writing in cuneiform is harder than you would think.  

But if you mess up, you can still eat the results, so that's good.  

We also celebrated Autumn Moon Festival this week.  This is not part of our homeschooling, but rather part of our family culture.  Moon Festival is a Chinese holiday, and since our family is part Chinese, we choose to celebrate it.  Of course, we put our own spin on it!  

Our version of Moon Festival involves eating ROUND foods because the moon is round.  So we had circular pasta, meatballs, peas, salad made from cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, and little wax covered round cheeses.  And powdered donut holes.  It's fun to hit the grocery store and see what round foods pop out at us each year.  Pizza is a good one, too.  

This is a mooncake!  The yellow is an egg yolk.  This year's variety is "mixed nuts" (appropriate for our family) and had pumpkin seeds and walnuts, along with other tidbits.

Mooncakes are a traditional food for the celebration, and they are meant to be shared.  

They come in a pretty tin, with a plastic knife for splitting them into pieces.  Paul picked these up at Costco.  

When the family sat down to eat, I read this book aloud to them.

Even Lukey likes mooncakes.

After dinner, we went outside to look at the moon and light our lantern.  

Paul insisted on tethering the lantern this time so I tied a string on it.  

Unfortunately, we ripped a hole in it, and never got it up in the air (there was a breeze, too), but it's always fun to be out in the street setting things on fire in the dark, and I think the kids had fun whether the lantern malfunctioned or not.  

And that was our week!  So far next week looks pretty tame, appointment wise, except for Wednesday, so hopefully we'll get to spend a lot of time learning.  

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