Monday, Monday

As Mondays go, this has been a pretty good one.  We finally got to crack open Story of the World Volume 3, new books are always so exciting!  We started Chapter 2 in Challenge Math and Andrew had some fun doing seemingly impossible problems:

Luke and I looked at various seeds today.  This is Luke pulling out some of orange seeds:

We wrapped some acorn squash seeds in a damp paper towel and put them into a ziplock bag full of hot air (straight from Mommy's mouth) and hung them in a window.  Luke even drew a picture of his seeds.  I don't even know why I decided to do this today, I meant for us to work on habitats, especially the arctic, goodness knows it's cold enough, but for some reason acorn squash seeds won out!

For physical education, hard-dee-har-har, we made stilts:

And that, my friends, was our Monday!

How was yours?

For my friends who are suffering...

I want to share an excerpt from the book I'm devouring now (this is ruining my 52/52 plans, because I've read three books this week and they were all great and one was supposed to be my classical for this coming week).  It's Madeleine L'Engle's "Two-Part Invention" (you might know her from the Wrinkle in Time series).  At this moment, in the book, her husband is suffering from cancer:

     "My friend Dana and I talk about how we want to make everything all right for those we love, and cannot.  Her mother died of pancreatic cancer only a few months ago.  We say to each other that if we were God we would make everything all right, and then we stop.  Look at each other.  Because we suddenly see that making everything all right would not make everything all right.  We would not be human beings.  We would then be no more than puppets obeying the strings of the master puppeteer.  We agree sadly that it is a good that we are not God; we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all.

     "But we do have to know in the very depths of our being that the ultimate end of the story, no matter how many aeons it takes, is going to be all right."

This really is an incredible book.  I'll review it once I'm done.  I wanted to post this, because I know a few people that have been suffering so many losses and I am such a dunce.  I hope this helps them, it is far better than I could've ever said.

Groovy Geometry: Games and Activities That Make Math Easy and Fun (Paperback)

I really can't believe I did not blog about this?!?  I thought I did, but apparently not!

This is a fantastic book, I can't say enough great things about!  For every lesson there is a ton of activities and games.  I didn't even know there was anything fun to be done with Geometry.  All these great things Andrew has been doing in math (creating angles, various card games, scavenger hunts etc) are from this book.

Silly me!  Next time I won't hold out!

Week 17 in Review

This has been a great week! After our two week holiday, I really wasn't sure whether we would be able to get back into the swing of things. There were a few things we did not get done, but for the most part we're just where we need to be.
Math

We started using Groovy Geometry. This is such an incredible resource! Andrew has made angles (above), found angles throughout the house, and learned about angle relationships. He's really loved math this week. Groovy Geometry also has a ton of games to play and they're fun enough that we've played them in and out of math class, by popular request. Below is Andrew's diagram of parallel lines with a transversal.

Reading, writing, grammar and spelling

Luke has read "Mat" a few times. We've been enjoying "The Wind and the Willows" for our read-aloud at bed time. He is getting much better at reading the words, instead of the pictures. Luke's also taken it upon himself to learn how to write. He still chooses the bigger kids' trash books at the library (Goosebumps and others like those). Drew has decided to start reading them to Luke, out of the kindness of his heart (and probably because I don't normally let him check out the vast quantities of those that Luke will sneak into his book bag).

Andrew is still reading "Alice in Wonderland." I'm so glad that he's enjoying this book. It was one of my favorites growing up. He's also read a few other books this week, written thank you letters to his grandmas (we're sending them out today), done a complete review of his poetry memorization, and kept up in spelling.

Latin and Greek

Andrew slogs on! He got an 87% on his review of the last lesson in Latin and he's learning the ending for "they" in Greek.
History

We've finished up everything in Story of the World 2, and are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Story of the World 3.
Science
We didn't do everything I wanted to this week. We are so far behind, I had planned on doubling up, but we only finished one chapter. The science experiment, though, went swimmingly! Dad made us wait until he was home, so it was all done in the dark. Also, the reaction was a bit bigger than I had expected, so the pictures are blurry.
If you ever wanted to know what happens when you mix Mentos (fruit flavored, we couldn't find mint anywhere?!?) and diet Coke… Viola!
Picture one, is our supplies (resting on the tubberware container of science). Two depicts our holding chamber for the Mentos.

That third blurry one is me leaping away and attempting to catch a picture of Mt. VisCokeulus.

I don't know that we learned anything, other than… Mentos and Coke do not mix.

It was a good week. We didn't get everything done, but we there was enough done for me to be able to rest easy this weekend. Oh, and this morning we woke up to more snow!!!! There's supposed to be even more dropped throughout the day!!!! Eeeeh!

Ah, the sound of reading :)

It started out so quiet.  Luke was practicing his reading.  Andrew was enjoying a new book.  Then, I just had to break out the camera and then the reading stopped and the giggles and goofies ensued. 

WOOHOO, we're back!

Today has gone so much better than I'd dare hope!  Luke did not do a single thing I had scheduled, but he did do work.  Somehow he's learned how to write an A:

He also did some workbook pages from a Nursery Rhyme book his gramma gave him for Christmas:

Andrew has done stellar.  He did every single topic and we were done on time.  Even with an interruption to go to the bank.  My buttons are bursting.

For math, he made an angle and moved it around to practice measuring angles:

Then, we played a game where we had to draw angles, just using a ruler.  If you were close enough to right, you got a point.  We're going to play this one again later today, he loved it.  Andrew also ran through the house measuring angles and decided two things, our house is slightly off and 90 degrees is the most common angle (except here, where you have to average together a list of 88 through 92 degree angles).

Greek went really well, as did Latin.  We wound it up with a new chapter in Science and (for writing) thank you letters to both his grandmothers:

Finally get to Upload some pictures :)

This is one of the color by numbers pages Luke got for Christmas (you can tell he's excited).

Drew is modeling his new coat, but the coat didn't quite make it into the picture.

Two of my favorite ornaments.  We got these for our first Christmas after we were married.  We're not blonde....  but who cares, right?

We went to the beach this morning.  It's about 30 out, but Luke wanted to see the ducks.