We have officially started school!!!!!!  We have had some ups and downs, but overall it's been a pretty good week.  I had planned to start Monday, but ended up watching a new seminary families' children so that the wife could go get her CA drivers liscence(they are from Mississippi).  Then our neighbor kids from across the street came over to play too.  I made the executive decision that God did not want us to start school that day but instead enjoy some fellowship with our friends. 

Sooo we started school on Tuesday.  I had just put together a new Managers of their Homes schedule.  There are some things that still need to be tweaked as I found that some things were taking longer than I thought and others shorter.  I don't really go by the schedule for time, but more for an order for us to do things in. 

Here's are the highlights of our first week:

Whole family

-FIAR - Read Night of the Moonjellies, CJ read aloud to us today.

- Watched a couple of National Geographic movies about the ocean and sea life. 

-Made an ocean biome with a ziploc bag, blue hair gel and foam sea creatures

- We finished The Long Winter and have moved on the Little Town on the Prairie.  Don't know what we're going to do when this series is over!

-Memory verse - Ecc 9:10 - Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might.  In trying to explain what the word might means, I thought of Mighty Mouse and sang them the theme song - HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!!!!!!  They all looked at me like I was nuts.  Thanks to the internet we were able to find pictures of mighty mouse and the theme song.  I also found out via the online catalog that the library does have a copy of the cartoon so we will be borrowing it in the near future.  So this week when I asked them to do a chore, they have been yelling out "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!!!!!!"

- We cooked and ate the corn we had grown in our garden! Unfortunately, we must have done something wrong, probably didn't keep it watered enough in this heat because it didn't taste very good(Glad we didn't save it for company!).  Our cherry tomatoes are starting to come in though.  We're a little confused on our strawberry plants as we have only yielded less than 10 strawberries so far. 

CJ (6)

- 3 days of math - She told me she wants me to make sure we do math everyday this year.  She really likes it; I don't.  I found last year that the things I didn't want to teach got pushed back--didn't realize she had caught me.  Can't sneak anything by these kids!

- a worksheet on New England that I found on Enchanted Learning about reading maps.  I thought this might be too old for her, but she did just great on it. 

- Explode the code pages.  Her reward for finishing is that she gets to color them:)

- She made her first book!!  It is titled Thumper's Birthday and she did all the illustrations.  We started out trying to use oil pastels(like in Night of the Moonjellies), but she got frustrated pretty quickly so she went back to her trusted markers and crayons. 

AK (5)

- Teach your child to read in 100 Easy Lessons for 4 days.  Pros - the lessons are short.  Cons - I think he's bored silly.  He was purposely saying the wrong sounds to mess with me.  Has anyone skipped ahead in this book with success? 

- I found a sea life phonics worksheet on Enchanted Learning for him and HE LOVED it!  I purposely hadn't bought him any workbooks, but am thinking that he may actually enjoy them. 

- Used the slate to practice the letter F.  Then he wanted to do ALL the letters on the front of the slate.  Got a little frustrated with K and W.  He's definitely not wanting to do one letter per week. 

- Swam all the way across the pool unassisted!

- Under the umbrella of "Life Skills" we had a training session in what to do if he is offered a food he doesn't like(which is pretty much everything).  I sat him in the kitchen and offered him all kinds of foods until he could say "No, thank you" without making a face:)  We'll see what happens the next time his sunday school teacher offers him an oatmeal cookie :) to see if he's learned this skill.

Overall, teaching him this week has been interesting as he's a little ahead on some things(he already knows all his sounds & his letters), but doesn't do it the way the book says to do it(especially in forming letters).  I'm trying to decide what things to be flexible on and what things I need to make him do the RIGHT way. 

EF (3)

- She saw me doing 100 easy lessons with Adam and said she wanted to do it too.  I got through about the 1/2 of the first section when she said "Actually, Mom, I don't want to do this anymore."

- Learned how to wipe down the bathroom sink and how to fold underwear.

- She is now swimming!  BW took her in the big pool this week and she can now swim from the step to him a couple feet with her face in the water and feet kicking.  She is so proud of herself!  Guess we will have 3 kids on the swim team next summer.

AF(10 mths)

- Started standing without holding onto anything and started really taking his first steps this week!  The kids were so excited to watch and imitate him!  BW and I were having such fun having him walk back and forth between us.  AF was loving all the attention. 

- Has become quite proficient in playing "fetch" with a little hand-sized soccer ball (his favorite toy).   

BW (30 something)

- Doing really well in his "Gladiator Greek" class, where only the strong survive.  Studying hard, but it's been such a blessing that a few of the guys who he had made friends with at the beginning of seminary are all in the same class together.  They are carpooling together, studying together, praying together -- the kinds of friendships I had always hoped he would have (God is so good!)

- Working on the keyboard a bit.  Printed off some online sheet music of Sonata in C and is trying to figure out how to play it. 

Me

- I plan to post an entry on Things I am learning this weekend so you'll need to check back.

- CJ's swim team is sporting "Power braids" for the championships this week and she wanted her hair braided too.  There were some teenagers charging for it, but I determined I would try to do it myself.  I went online to find directions and it came out pretty good if I do say so myself.  It lasts about a week and I must say it's been kind of nice to not have her complaining/whining/screaming about the tangles in her hair for a a couple of days. 

- You cannot cook brown rice in the microwave.  The package says you can, but they are wrong.  It ends up just soaking up all the water and burning the rice to a crisp and making your microwave smell.   

All in all, it's been a pretty productive and full week.  The kids have their last swim team practice today : ( and their last championship meet tomorrow : ).  It's going to be weird to not go to practice everyday.  It has been such a great experience for our family in so many ways - meeting neighbors & making friends, kids learning to swim better, wonderful coaches,  a way to cool off in the heat, a regular place we needed to be everyday....  I could go on.

If you've read this far, thanks for being interested.  We are all looking forward to a great school year.

-J