Blood Pressure Saga

First of all, I would like to update you on my blood pressure situation.  Last Saturday I ended up back in the E.R.    My heart rate accelerated from normal to around 120 beats per minute while I was sleeping.   It was a very scary feeling.  The E.R. doctor had me double up on my procardia.  (My BP had increased as well) 

After talking with my girlfriend Heather she encouraged me to contact Dr.Monk who has been my chiropractor/kinesiologist for the past 6 years and to tell him what's going on. I already had an appointment for the 26th, but she didn't think I should wait.  I am SO glad I listened. 

When I gave him the full details he told me that my minerals were "off", no matter what the blood work said from the doctor and that I needed to start on Potassium immediately.  He took me off my multi-vit as he thought that might be making things worse for right now.  I am just beginning my 3rd day with the potassium and my blood pressure has dropped so low I had to call the doctor.  I am positive that she is going to cut my dose in half.  (Right now my pressure is 102/69)  On the 26th he will test me to find out what else is off and will tell me what I need to take and what to do with my diet.  Praise the Lord!

SCHOOL
Drawn Into The Heart Of Reading
(Literary Analysis)

We are studying the Genre' "Adventure".  This book takes place during the Revolutionary War.  Ellen Toliver is asked to go on a secret mission for the Patriots when her Grandfather is hurt and unable to do it himself.  Ellen is a little girl who is scared of everything and this story shows you how she has to grow up and overcome her fears!  It is an excellent read a loud!  There is a secret message entombed and baked into a simple loaf of bread and Ellen must take this load across the river and through the heart of enemy camps.

Speaking of which...,

Seth grinding our grain as we make our own bread

We decided to make our own secret message for dad!

We rolled it up

Then put it in parchment paper

We then hid the message in one of my loaves of bread.

Daddy cutting the bread

What's this?

Secret Message!

History

We are studying about the Pilgrims going from England to Holland right now.  The Tulip is the flower of Hollanders and the story we are reading talks about one of the girls (her name is Love) planting a tulip bulb and the patience it required to wait for it to bloom.  Here are the boys with their hand crafted tulips.  These hands on projects help to really bring the story to life!

Here is a new secret I've found to make my life easier.  One of the things I have disliked about doing crafts is the clean up.  Though I make the boys help it seems like there is always little papers that fall on the floor or are left on the table.  Sometimes it's frustrating because we have to keep leaving the dining room to throw things around in the kitchen.  Sometimes we drag the whole garbage can with us, but even that seems like one extra step I don't want to take.  I now have what I call my trash bowl.  It's small enough to be portable and it's not a big dirty garbage can.  We put all our trash in and then when we are done simply carry it to the big garbage to dump.  I use it while I cook.  All my eggs, paper, wrappers, etc go in my trash bowl and it gets dumped a few times a day. 

As we studied how light travels the boys were able to do a project to help them understand the concept.  We explained that you cannot see wind by itself, but when you blow on water or when the wind blows over the ocean you see the energy of the wind by the way it makes waves.  The boys learned that light travels the same way, in waves.

Our verse this week was from Psalm 139:14 "Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it."  For science one day we talked about the heart and how the Lord in His majesty created our bodies so wonderfully complex that the heart beats everyday, over and over and over without needing a break.  We talked about how the body repairs itself and how amazing yet complex it is.  Only God could do that.  For our hands on the boys listened to each other's hearts beating with a toilet paper roll. 

Math

As I told you last week we are now using Singapore which goes with Heart Of Dakota.  Carrie (the author of HOD) gives us concrete, fun, hands on math activities to do that help our children understand concepts before assigning pages for them to do in their workbooks.  We have had so much fun with this.  Here are some pictures of our Math Fun!

Seth, used Macaroni to be his snakes out in the desert as he learned how to write his own math subtraction word problems. 

This was an assignment that had Sethy have to color the picture based upon getting the correct answer to his math problems.  The one factor the company probably didn't take into consideration is that Seth is my color blind boy and so his turtle is orange instead of brown

As you know my precious Jacob struggles with processing delays.  He was having a difficult time grasping the concepts, "Different/Same".  We used the hands on suggestions of using real life objects from our home and made a game out of it.  He sailed through the workbook pages with no problem afterwards!

Same/Different

Here is Colton working on his Time4Learning

Big Brother Brandon helping his younger brother with Math!  I LOVE homeschooling and how it allows my boys to be friends as well as siblings!

Sethy, making his own word problems with cheerio's!

PHONICS

Jacob working with his Hooked On Phonics!

Jacob working on his name

Jake was so proud of his name he put it on his bed.  Do you see our Maggie?  She has to be a part of anything the boys do because she thinks she's human, LOL!