Happy Hearts

Wow, it’s been quite awhile since I updated last. We have done through Florida with the states.

We are almost done with the Abeka’s grade 2 history & science, so we’ll be starting grade 3 soon.

The last several weeks they learned about Separatists, Colonists, and America’s Indians.

In science, more about plants/flowers, physics concepts such as energy, force, friction, etc.

We have been working through the books “What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know” and “What Your 2nd Grader Needs to Know” together, just reviewing content that T1 & H already know, covering all subjects. We are about 1/4 of the way through each one.

In Bible and art, A’s done through the story of Lot. He started at Creation and is working through the whole Bible with them. They each draw as he tells the story and he draws on our dry erase board. This is one of their favorite times of the day!

In math, T & H are still practicing carrying over and borrowing/regrouping, money, and they have learned to tell time now to the minute. T2 is working on simple addition.

They work in their separate language workbooks each day.

So, that’s what’s been going on in our house. The weather has still been beautiful, so we’ve been able to still spend a lot of time outdoors!

This week we did Arizona and Arkansas. Also learned about:

-earthworms, looked at them under the microscope and did an experiment.
-beavers, their habitat, diet, and behavior
-The history behind Veteran’s Day
-The history behind Thanksgiving

They did review in borrowing/carrying over, time, and money.

T1 and H have learned “Away We Go”, “Hot Cross Buns”, and “Merrily we Roll Along” on the recorder, and the B, A, and G notes by sight on the music scale.

Each day they worked in their Language and Math workbooks.

T2 is still slowly moving along with his reading skills.

We are back from MI!  We had a wonderful time visiting with family.  We visited a science museum (very cool place!!), spent a day at the lake where H and T2 had their first tubing experience, and visited a zoo, where they all 3 rode a pony for the first time.  The weather was so nice!  Today we are going to grandma and grandpa’s for lunch and to see the family.

We started a unit study of the USA before we left.  We’ve done Alabama and Alaska so far.   This week we are doing Arizona and Arkansas.  We also started learning borrowing in math.  We’re still working through Abeka History and Science together, and the kids are doing their own level language and reading.  We also got a recorder and are learning that right now too.

We are looking for a sports program that will work with the needs of our family for this fall and winter.

Is over!   The kids had an awesome time!  A ended up working all week, so I’m the one who went with T1.

The theme was Son Rock Kids Camp build your life on the Rock (Jesus).  All the kids  raised over  2k to help feed kids in India, Liberia, and Mynmar!

On Friday, we left straight from the church to go to Legoland!  We stopped by the hotel we were going to stay,  and then went to Legoland and met J & L and the kids.

The kids thought this was the coolest place ever!  There were big Star Wars lego guys, a big Chicago landscape room, a jungle adventure, building workshops, “factory” tour, 4D movies, and 2 rides.  T1 said his favorite was the dragon ride (which we rode many times lol), H said hers was the movies, T2 said his was “all of it”.  When we left there, we went to the hotel and crashed.  In the morning, I took the kids to the pool while A slept in.  After that we went to the park, and then out for breakfast, and then went to the huge mall there for awhile.  We then headed home.

Today we are going to granan’s for lunch after church.

Tomorrow we are starting our United States unit study.  We are going to be learning about each state, taking a few days with each one.  Main objectives are for them to know each state, its capital, and where it is located.  Since T1 and H already know a lot of them, we may one take 1 day with those.  We’ll also learn an overview of how the state got its name, the flag, and other historic facts as we go.

We are going to MI next weekend and we’re staying there for a week!  I can’t wait!

The summer is going by so fast!  We’ve been having a great summer, this is the best temperature I ever remember for summertime here so far.  It has been in the 70′s and 80′s and not humid hardly at all!

We spend a lot of time outside most every day.  Black raspberries are ripe, and we’ve made a few trips to the park and out around the farmer’s field and have netted about 8 gallons.  We went blueberry picking today (and fishing!) so I now have $40 of blueberries in my freezer.  Woohoo!  We’ve made homemade ice cream a few times, so far black raspberry (three times) and strawberry.  We’re doing bluberry tomorrow.

We’ve been doing a lot of odds and ends for the summer for school, and daily T1 is working in his workbook, H in her workbook, and T3 just finished his preK book and started his K book.  We’ve been doing Abeka science and history all together.  We’re getting ready to start a new unit study after VBS is over.   T2 is on his way to reading!  It is finally starting to click!

We went to an antique steam show last weekend, it was a lot of fun.  The kids each entered the tractor pull contest, none of them placed, but got a ribbon for participation.

VBS at our church is the last week of July, and the kids are very excited about that!  Hopefully A gets called in for work in the afternoons for that week.  He’s back on “layoff”, and hasn’t missed any work, but they’ve been sending him as far as 2 hours away for work, and we only have one vehicle right now, so that’s been a little stinky.

So we’ve  been doing a PECS schedule for almost a week now.  It seems to be helping T1 a bit with things, but I hope more improvement will come.  He’s been very hard to be patient with the last few weeks.

K and her family are on vacation, and H can’t wait for her to come home!  We’ve been taking care of their cat and stuff, which I have come to know for sure that I never want a cat!  I already knew that, but this just confirmed it.  Casper is a cool cat and all, but cleaning out litter boxes and cat hair flying everywhere is just not my cup of tea.

Well, this really doesn’t quite sum up our life right now, but I need to go eat some ice cream! Ta-Ta!

The last few weeks have went by so fast.  J and the boys and my dad came to visit.  We had a lot of fun, and great weather.

We went to the Maple Syrup Tapping Time that we go to every year at a local park while they were here, and we also got to spend quite a bit of time with my aunt and uncle and their boys, so that was really great.

We had our first trip to the Brookfield Zoo, A’s youngest brother and family and our neighbors came too, so between 8 kids 8 and under, we were there for 6 hours and really only made it halfway through.   We’re going back when A’s oldest brother and family is here from NY in a week and a half, and their new big animated dinosaur exhibit is going to be open, the kids can’t wait!!

We had our CPR class today, so we only have 1 more class and we are done with that part, and will just be waiting on paperwork and our homestudy to be done!

We went to a playgroup yesterday for kids with autism.  It was at an indoor playground, and the kids had a lot of fun.  T1 didn’t play with anyone but his siblings, but that’s pretty much to be expected of him.  It was funny to be around kids who were SO much like him!!  April is Autism awareness month, and we’ll be participating in a walkathon on the 25th.

T1 and H have been working through their grammar/math workbooks, they are pretty much now doing seatwork every day.  T1′s incentive is computer time equal to the amount of time he does seatwork.    T2 is working on sounding out words and writing skills.   Of course they READ, READ, READ all the time (I still read aloud to them of course).  I love that they have a passion for books like their parents.

This week, the weather’s been awesome, we got a good head start on spring cleaning in the yard.  I painted the screen porch off the garage, and A put a new door on it.  It looks nice.  It’s snowing tonight.   So much for the nice spring weather.

We’re going to start a new unit study on Monday (not sure what yet), something we can do in a week, until M, J, and their 4 boys come on the April 2nd.  This will be our first time seeing baby J, yay, I can’t wait!

We did the FIAR book When I Was Young in the Mountains this week.  It was a fun little study.

 Monday-

-Geography-Appalachia

-Learned what coal was, and about how it is mined

-Traveling photographers and what they did

Tuesday-

-Talked about the different emotions in the book

-LA-Repetition

-contentment

-estimated different weights and then weighed to see who came closest to the actual weight

-made hot cocoa on the stove like the grandmother did

-T1 reasoning skills workbook (Drawing conclusions/categorizing by like attributes pt.1)

Wednesday-

-Art-sky/light & liquid palette

-Set up a “general store” and took turns shopping and being Mr. and Mrs. Crawford.

-Bar/graph worksheets

-T1 reasoning skills workbook (Drawing Conclusions/categorizing by like attributes pt. 2)

Thursday-

-Phases of the moon

-moon phases craft- T1 & H made waxing crescents, T2 made a waning crescent

-Time to the quarter hours and minutes worksheets

-Time game

-T1 RS workbook -Drawing conclusions/identifying occupations

-It was nice out, so we worked outside for awhile, cleaning the garage and picking up sticks in the yard, and of course a lot of jumping on the trampoline, bike riding, etc. in between!

Friday-

-math problems correlating with the well pump in the book

-compared grandmother’s meal to a nutrition chart

-T1 RS workbook- Drawing conclusions/identifying concrete characteristics

-It was beautiful outside!  We spent a few hours at the park in the morning, and then came home and played outside in the sandbox for the rest of the day, and K came over too.

We had our foster parent class on Saturday, then A had to go to work and the kids and I went to the thrift store to get books, and then we spent a nice evening relaxing and reading.

Today we did home church, and then we went to grandma and grandpa’s for lunch with grandnan, aunts and uncles and cousins.  Fun day.

We’re going to do the FIAR book Katy and the Big Snow next.  J and the boys and my dad are coming to visit this weekend, they’re going to get here Friday night and stay until Monday morning.  I can’t wait to see my nephews again!!

OK, everyone got really sick.  Thankfully, no more puking, but the kids had raging fevers for about 3 days.  Seriously, the homeopathic fever stuff didn’t come close to touching it.   We had to piggyback Motrin and Tylenol for 3 days straight, and they just kept their fevers down to a tolerable 101-102.  T1 & H both hit 104 a few times, and T2 105.  It was pretty intense.  They’ve never had high fevers like this for so long before!

Obviously we didn’t do any learning activities.  They pretty much slept off and on and laid around miserable.   T1 missed his chess club and H missed her American Girl program at the library, and they missed AWANA (T2 was happy about that!), so their was some disappointment to be had there.

Today they were pretty much acting normal, so we’ll start our FIAR book “When I Was Young and in the Mountains” tomorrow.

A’s repainting the bathroom tomorrow, same color, white,  just fresh paint, and we’re redoing the decorations in there, so we are looking forward to a new look in there.

Oh yeah, T1 lost his top 2 teeth this week, 1 fell out, and the other fell out a few days later.  He has a big toothless grin, it’s awesome, he looks so cute!!

Well, T2 caught what I had.  We got our brand new living room furniture and huge rug delivered and set up yesterday afternoon, and about 2 hours later he started running a fever.  He fell asleep on the couch.  I moved him to his bed and he had a restless night of sleep, with the fever breaking only to return a little while later.  Just like with me.

Then, this morning, he laid on the loveseat for a few hours, and then 15  minutes after he got up and went upstairs, he thew up all over our couch upstairs and the floor.  I’m so sad he’s sick, but I am SO glad he didn’t get sick on our less than 24 hours old new furninture.

J and the boys are now postoning their visit once again, until the weekend of the Mar. 14th.

A funny thing, at the same time T2 threw up, H started yelling that her tooth fell out, so she’s lost her very first tooth!!!!  It is now currently residing underneath her pillow, waiting for her tooth fairy money. 

So that’s the drama that’s unfolding at our house right now.  I’m sure there’s going to be more in the days to come, as this viral stuff seems to be quite strong, and will probably cycle through the family. Ugh.

We went to the aquarium on Friday.  We had a great time.  It was fun looking at many of the animals we’ve studied in the last several weeks.

It was super crowded and noisy though, T1 had a very rough time with all of the noise, but we made it through the whole place.  The oceanarium part was being remodeled, so we didn’t get to see any of those animals.

After the aquarium, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry to go to the Omnimax to see the current film, which was about the ocean.  T1 freaked as soon as we got inside the dome before it even started, and I couldn’t get him to calm down, so we went to the back hallway, and I tried convincing him to watch it from there, but when it started he started running away with his hands on his ears saying it was too loud even from there.  Sigh.  So, they were nice enough to refund our tickets, and we walked around the space exploration part of the museum while A and H and T2 saw the show.  They loved it.

So, that was our fun and quite interesting trip to the city for the day.

J and the boys ended up not coming, so they are coming this weekend instead.  I have the flu, I’ve been sick since Saturday afternoon, so hopefully I am all better by then, and I don’t pass my germs on.  We ended up not starting the FIAR book, since today is the first day I’ve even been able to get out of bed!  I’m so thankful A wasn’t working this week, he’s taken care of everything since Saturday.  Starting on March 1, he goes back to work off layoff, and will even be on a shift instead of being on call, so that is a total answer to prayer.

Also, we had our first foster parent class on Saturday!  6 more to go!