We The People movie review #godsnotdeadMIN #GodsNotDeadWeThePeople #MomentumInfluencerNetwork

I got the opportunity to see God's Not Dead - The Next Chapter, We The People ahead of it's release date.  I liked it!  I will say, up front, this was a 2 Kleenex movie for me.  I cry at everything, though.  

Quick synopsis:  social worker persecutes homeschool families, judge rules they must send kids to school or be found in contempt of court, which means hefty fines and jail time.  A trip to Washington DC happens, for the purpose of testifying at a congressional hearing.  

This picture is the 4th installment in the God's Not Dead movie series, which I did not know prior to viewing.  It does fine as a stand alone film, though.  It doesn't feel like you're jumping into the middle of the story.  I came away from it wanting to see the first 3 movies, though.  

There are several other fun threads that run through this production, of course.  There's kind of an underdog character who has their moment to shine, when a single mom stands before a senate subcommittee and makes a passionate speech.   There's a small whiff of romance between a homeschooled teen and a public schooled teen.  

One thing I realized while watching We The People, is that I've become really dependent on the closed captioning on all the streaming services.  The screening I watched was not closed captioned, and I know there were things I missed.  Oh, the joys of getting old.  

You can get more information about the film and showtimes on Facebook, or at the God's Not Dead website.  Buy your tickets for this inspiring, family friendly movie, in theaters October 4-6.  

Many thanks to Pinnacle Peak for providing this product/product information for review.  Opinions are 100% my own and not influenced by monetary compensation.  I did receive the product in exchange for this review and post.  

Our Last Week of Homeschool

Possibly our last week ever, but who knows?  I thought I'd taught my last week of homeschool in 2017, and that turned out not to be the case.  Open hands.  

Katie's jumping dolphins craft.

Josiah is having some medical issues.  He's been in a couple of times, and today he had a pre-procedure covid test, in preparation for an appointment this coming week.  I'm trying not to be a worried mom, but I'll feel better once we know what we're dealing with.  

Miss Hannah had a birthday, and decided that 14 is old enough to light her own cake on fire.  

Since she didn't have experience with lighters, Sam helped a bit.  

Katie's sword and sheath.

Katie's bottle fish.

I got behind on photographing art, so these are from our time in Ireland.  Harps.

Celtic crosses.

Something or other castle.  

Thatched roof cottage.

Seals.

Crabs done in watercolor crayon.  

Bats.

Books - we're not getting the large piles any more at this point.  

Did you know that shelters are now using animal facial recognition software to help unite owners with lost pets?  I thought I should get a good, full frontal shot of the Grum, just in case he ever goes missing.  He's also microchipped, but average folks don't carry chip readers, whereas a photo is just a click away.  

The girls added various sea life to their ocean boxes over the last semester, and with the completion of the Swimming Creatures books, their ocean boxes were done, too.  

So, I had them share their boxes with the family at dinner, and tell about some of the creatures they created/included.  

One morning, I walked into the school room and proclaimed, "We're going to play with knives today!"  I handed them each a razor blade, and they removed all the pages from their Swimming Creatures workbooks.  The pages with tape, staples, glue, etc went in the trash, but the paper-only pages went to the garage to be shredded for bunny litter.  They've since also hacked up their Flying Creatures workbooks and some finished spelling, English, and handwriting workbooks.  We'll have free bunny litter for a good while.  

This was gratifying.  Something I can quantitatively point to and say, "They learned to label ____ number of countries on a map this year."  The left two columns were from the first day of school, back in August.  The same activity, done the final week of school, netted far better results.  I'm pretty sure Hannah can identify more than I can on a couple of continents.  

Jack's watch broke recently.  So I ordered him a new one.  This masculine black and red one, pictured above.  

Imagine our surprise upon opening the package, when this cute kitty watch showed up instead.  Jack laughed like crazy, and offered to wear it to school anyway, but I said I'd return it for the right one.  Only, the right one showed up with the buckle assembled backwards.  I think we're going to try a different brand next.  

Puerto Rican frogs, called coqui.  

Hummingbirds.

I wanted to give the girls something to do while I was tutoring my English learner via Zoom, so I pulled out these mosaic kits from the respite at home program.  

I love having little treats tucked away that I can pull out on a whim.  

Grumman, who looks cute when he naps on my desk, is rather annoyed with us right now.  

Because the day after we finished school, we got the "Can you foster kittens?" text from the shelter.  

Yes.  Yes, we can.  There's 3 of them, all girls.  The tiny white one in the first picture is Oslo, the calico is Quito, and the black & white one is Cairo.  Place names, in honor of our around the world learning this year.  

I always think that having foster kittens is a good experience for Hannah and Katie, but even Sam and Josiah have been playing with them and taking pictures of them.  I suspect that the way girls squeal, "Omigosh, how cuuuuute!" when shown a picture of a kitten may have something to do with this.  

We'll have to come up with new things to request books about next week, as our pick ups have really trickled off.  We're down to only 32 books out!  

Our plan for the next month is to take Jack to school, work on the school room (we have started turning this year's used papers into shred for the bunny, and we've started taking down some of the artwork), play with the kittens, continue our walk/jog/bike jaunts each morning (we did 1.3 miles today!), and fill in with projects/art/cooking on an "as I feel like it" basis.  I'm planning to try to sell off our curriculum, and donate many of our remaining school room books to the kids' fledgling school library.  I'm feeling like we could end up with a couple less bookcases around here when we're done.  I'd like to actually paint at least one wall in here, but I'm holding that wish lightly.  

Once Jack is out of school, we'll embrace the summer lack of routine, as long as everyone tolerates it well.  Some people thrive on structure.  And, we'll keep working our way up to that 3 mile/day goal we have for June.  

Our Week In Which We Jogged More

The weekend got away from me without me getting this posted.  I'm not even sure what I did over the weekend, but posting Our Week wasn't it.  

Last week we learned the difference between turtles (they live mainly in the water) and tortoises (they live mainly on land).  

Again with the trying to use up art supplies.  The girls drew self-portrait astronauts on black art paper in acrylic marker.  Basic idea from Art Projects For Kids site.

Library books.  We're still working on getting down to a more reasonable number of books checked out.  We're at 70 right now.  But we only have 24 books on hold, instead of our usual 60.  When all the books for Hannah's report go back, that should help.  Also, we're about to start our Last Week Of School, so I'm sure our interest-led, summer acquisitions will go back in a more timely manner.  

Attended the zoom baby shower for Zach & Heather's little boy.  Shower by zoom is a little weird, but it's exciting that his birthday is getting closer.  My plan is to go visit in September, but I'm trying to hold lightly to that plan.  

More books.  

I'm grateful for the push to get us exercising more.  The girls jog while I ride my bike.  

And we do some exercise in the garage, too, using Hannah's new equipment.

In fact, we've decided to participate in this year's virtual Walk For Love event.  We'll really be pushing ourselves, as it's 20 miles in 8 days.  We have until June to work our way up to the 3 miles a day goal.  The first time we went a whole mile, Hannah was really sore the next day.  

Sea creature drawings

This was a good book.  It was a quick read, which is good, because I didn't get to it until 3 days before it was due.  It's faith based, which is helpful, as it talked about how to handle a situation where an adult child is making choices you oppose for religious reasons.  It helped affirm my "nod and smile" (or "smile and wave" if you're a Madagascar fan) policy, and reinforced some things that I knew but struggle with putting into practice.  Perfect timing, since I facilitated one of the boys adulting at Urgent Care this week.  

Annaliese scored big sister points by sending the girls a package of goodies.  

Shamrock drawings to go with our study of IRELAND this week.  We learned why there's Ireland and Northern Ireland.  This year has really been eye opening, in terms of understanding the effects of colonialism.  How very weird that Europeans felt entitled to claim bits of land all over our globe.  

Bird drawings

Instead of our usual route around the block, we started varying our route a bit and ended up at the park a couple of times.  

Feels good to get out in the sunshine!  We got spoiled with weather in the 80*s and when it dipped down for a couple days, I went back to sitting in front of the space heater.  Fortunately, it's looking like 80* again tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future.  Whew!  

Strong girls!  

Oh Grumman.  He has a thing for freshly washed ankles, as Sam discovered after his shower recently.  

Since the girls have finished their English curricula, we've been doing Mad Libs to review parts of speech.  

Books, books, books

Katie's St. Brigid's Cross craft.  Grumman is so thrilled to have pipe cleaners all over the house again.  Sigh.  

He's probably exhausted from destroying pipe cleaner crafts.  

We're getting to the time of year where there are a lot of, "Choose any..." assignments.  The "make any origami animal from this book" is a good example.  Also, today's "Pick any Robert Frost poem for copywork."  Hannah's gotten into writing poetry lately, which makes me smile.  

Our beloved mascot won't be happy when we're not hanging out in the school room every morning any more.  

"Hey Mom?  Can you Crikey me a jet mask?"  Yes.  Yes, I can.  I pulled up Design Space, searched "plane," and handed him the iPad to select the image he wanted.  We made it together.  

We've finished Ireland and are moving on to our very last country for the school year:  Puerto Rico!  The girls are taking their final exam in Swimming Creatures science today.  We're really starting to wrap things up.  Very exciting.