Week 20
January 13th through 15th
(and then vacation!)
Kinder Kid goes to the Greenberg Train Show with Mom. We drug along zero extra children so that he could fully enjoy himself.
It was new water heater week for the bizness! Dad brings home giant boxes to play with. They make rocket ships and alien spacecraft.
Playing with new trains from the train show
It's like a Jack-in-the-Box
The Kid Cabin at GWL!
We alternate our time in the waterpark with MagiQuest, the magic wand game that keeps kids running amuck in the hallways at GWL all hours of the day.
Week 21
January 22nd through 26th
We are treated with a warm weather blast upon our return from Great Wolf and we take full advantage. Wet, yucky sandboxes are my favorite. NOT! Some schoolwork gets done as well. In re-entering the elementary kids' school bins, I realize we have pretty much used what's in there to the best of our ability and both kids are in need of something fresh. In addition, I've decided I need more time to spend with my older kids, and there is always a need for more office time as our small business grows (and grows and grows). So, we pack a lot of the redundant resources away and I get some used Five In A Row books for the elementary kids. Follow-along curriculum, you say?!? Don't worry, that would surprise me, too. But, we are going to use it more as a very (very) loose guide. It gives us a book list to grab, and resources to talk about. I like that it focuses on sitting together and reading, something that despite our best intentions, wasn't happening in our homeschool day. Even the big kids come around the corner and end up in front of me while I read the interesting books aloud. The 3rd grader read the first book listed, The Boxcar Children (which is well beneath her reading level but very much her age level for content, and which she'd read previously but hadn't been very into) and took off with the series. She was hauling 7 books a week home from the library and reading 2 a day, and as long as we get in some mapwork, art, and discussion about the book, I'm fine with her running with it. Kinder Kid's list includes some really interesting books we probably wouldn't have come across on our own, and we are making Country Cards for every country we come across in the books.
If Tot disappears at the library, this is where you'll find her.
Sharing music with Tot
Online artwork on the library's workstations
This was Robot week for Elementary Science! We had a blast making tiny motors go with wires, alligator clips and batteries. We used a template from Pinterest and made these cute coloring Bots, substituting what we had, of course. We spent most of Tot's nap figuring and re-figuring out the best connections, why our motors wouldn't go (they needed weight on the spinning part) and which weight worked best for making the Bot color. We also figured out that our Bots went crazy fast and traveled off the paper in a second, so we just let them color on the floor. Magic Erasers (or it's cheaper Amazon foam sponge counterpart) are wonderful things.
Ever creative, 3rd Grader makes a rainbow from alligator clips
Now we're getting some action
Mess!
Kinder Kid began a soccer program at a local indoor sports center. The goal is to get him moving, and give him social opportunities with same-aged peers. I am nervous because this is a parents-stay-behind-the-glass situation, and I have no idea how he's going to do behaviorally, sensory-wise, and socially. But we're trying it!
Using magnets to do math and other things
3rd Grader goes to an after-school program on Science. It's amazing! Our unsocialized homeschooler knows 3 out of the 7 students there! One from mom's club, one from church, and one from theater camp. Gosh, she is so not social. ;)
Tot creates art with foam peel-off stickers.
The after-school science program focused on Snap Circuits which causes a flurry of re-interest in the elementary kids for the rest of the week.
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