Week 12
November 13 to 18
1) On this week's Monday, I have written in my planner that the elementary aged kids took math tests, but I can't remember what they were! Every now and then we have the kids take tests, either to help gauge where they are with something or for curiosity. Our state requires grades 3, 5, and 8 to take a standardized test from a published list, but we do one of these every year for grades 2 and up for our own records. This wouldn't have been the standardized tests, though, as only the older kids did them this year. It may have been just an online placement test. Following that, 3rd grader worked on her times tables, and kinder kid did some sight word building with magnetic letters on the fridge. Later in the car, we somehow got into a discussion on syllables, which turned into a full scale lesson for the kinder guy.
Pajama Day again??
Kinder kid's Train-themed schedule helps keep him on track.
It's a bit blurry, but it has 5 icons: School Work - Block 1, Play Break, School Work Block 2, Play Break, School. Each School Block is about 20 minutes, then he is done for the day, with the exception of if we are watching anything connected on youtube, Netflix or Amazon Prime, or if we are doing science experiments. His sit-down written work is no more than 1 total hour per day.
Tot moves on to a different style of puzzle, but becomes busy trying to peel the paper off the wood.
So we stamp shapes instead.
Some fine motor with the pincer thingies and some math manipulatives before starting another School Block.
Building Sight Words
Math review.
2) No pics from Tuesday, but big news!! Kinder guy finished his kindergarten math book! Like, finished it. Done. The same guy who we weren't even sure would be able to sit and work. We are so proud of you, RJ! We also had OT at the library and 3rd grader did math, phonics, and Word Study.
3) Again, no pics! Was my phone broken or something?? We did science today instead of Tuesday, our normal science day. We are using an Evan-Moor book on Space that I found on our homeschool room bookshelf. I had to do some prep (probably why we didn't do it Tuesday) and they did some projects from the book. 3rd grader also did violin, Minecraft science on animal habitats, and Prodigy Math. She has been emailing a friend she met at the playground at the campsite from our trip to Massachusetts back in September. She emails about once per week. This friend's family sold their house and bought a camper and is traveling all over North America! It's exciting to open the email and see where they are each week. Big kids and I did history together, we are studying Africa. We touched on some big concepts today, like Albino people and how they are at risk of being hunted by witchdoctors for their body parts, and how some cities and peoples in Africa are so poor they sell their children. It's difficult to have to introduce your children to these concepts but I'd much rather they learn in their own home than from other sources.
4) Elementary kids continued making projects with the Evan-Moor Space book and had a lot of fun with all the crafty things we were doing. We also got outside today in the afternoon.
We play outside with our goofy grins.
5) Today I did a lot of helping the big kids with their planners, going over their work for the last 2 months and making plans to stick with or change up their learning resources. Elementary kids watched Magic School Bus: Going Cellular and we researched some of their learnings further.
Week 13
November 20 - 24
It's Thanksgiving week! We are hosting 13 people, 7 of which are just us, so it's not all that big of a meal. We are all pretty much ready for a break. This week is going to consist of a lot of prep for the feast, including extra house chores, making some table setting pieces, and of course, cooking!
1) Since Tot is still locked into a high chair for eating, our current 6-seater table was still temporarily working. But we'd known since we found out she was joining us that we'd eventually need a bigger table. We had the opportunity to acquire my grandparent's table and picked it up over the weekend, just in time to host Thanksgiving! Monday was mostly spent gathering recipes, finalizing our grocery list, and shopping to the list. Our town's stores easily triple their shoppers on holiday weeks so it was disgusting even though it was still 3 days from Thanksgiving. Somehow we made it through unscathed.
Old Table and Hutch
New Table and Hutch
It was so nice I had to decorate it. And then, I loved that teal color so much that I used it in our tablescaping. Which, for the record, I only learned was a word when I was looking up which way the knives and spoons went in a table setting. So don't go thinking I'm a regular tablescaper or anything like that. But I do love teal. And orange. And our table looked lovely!
My little bakers at our new table.
Cranberry Orange Scones
Chocolate Banana Muffins
The kids take a break and check out the giant book of birds of North America that we also acquired from my grandparent's house.
3) It's the day before Thanksgiving. I am not feeling rushed or stressed at all because we made lists and planned ahead and we are right on track. So we make the table setting stuff and we bake some more. Mostly because we already ate everything we baked yesterday!
I get some ribbon in that wonderful color that matches my centerpiece and get real fancy. I take the dryer lint out of several toilet paper tubes (we made fire starters out of them and our dryer lint), I clean them off (by blowing on them) and I cut them into napkin holders. Glue the ribbon on with hot glue, and Ta-Da! This is as fancy as it gets at our place, folks.
But now that I have napkin holders, and the cloth napkins I found deep in our old hutch, now I feel compelled to make placemats that match. Good thing I am ahead in the planning and have time to add some crafty art time to our homeschool week! We cut out circles for the plate place, then break out the fancy hole punchers and make some confetti to glue around it.
And then, the plain teal circle looked too boring, so I had the kids trace their hands and make them into turkeys, add their name and age plus 5 things they were thankful for this year. Yes, in my alternate life, I am really a Preschool Teacher. I know. Projects like this simultaneously make me happy, and want to barf in my mouth.
All kids who are not toddlers are still baking. My counters are seriously jacked up.
Here we have a chicken in the back left, which will be used for parts and broth, totally unrelated to Thanksgiving, except that we'll be using the broth in some recipes and my neighbor needs some for his recipe. It was just time for broth. The other large stockpot is the brine for the turkey. And the muffin tin is holding some really fantastic Gluten Free dinner rolls. Seriously, GF bread is not really on my faves list, but these were really, really delish!
Baking upon baking means dishes upon dishes.
Our Tablescape
From here, you can't even tell there's re-purposed toilet paper rolls on that table!
I gathered my goobers for a picture.
5) We always take off the day after Thanksgiving, too. Mostly so we can all nurture our Food Babies from yesterday, come down from the excitement, and get out the Christmas Decorations! Yay! We also had kinder kid's Theraplay appt.
Who is this red fat guy?
Teamwork!
And there's Weeks 12 and 13! Since this is being posted in our actual 15th week of homeschool this year, we are So. Close. to being caught up!
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