Yesterday we did another project from our Marilyn Burn’s Geometry unit book (does she have a fan club yet or should I start one?).  First we read “Cloak for a Dreamer” then we made our own patterns with the pattern blocks.  After picking a favorite Jordan and Alex traced the shapes onto construction paper and made their own cloaks.  One of those projects where everyone was engaged and enjoying everything. 

We had quite an up and down week last week.  The kids had fun excavating and mapping their jello archeological dig.   This was our first “official” week back and so we did a bit more formal work than usual.  For science we are studying space/astronomy to go along with a science forum our homeschool group is having in a couple of months.  I also happened to win a huge NASA space curriculum last year at a science program and we are going through that doing the projects that interest us.    We finished up the “What is History” pocket in our History Pockets and that is still more or less a hit.

 Our downhills this week had to do with some attitudes and my less than stellar reaction to them.   Alex has this negative first reaction to pretty much everything.  Field trips–never wants to go on them.  Usually I say he has to come along because his sisters want to go but he doesn’t have to participate.  After a few minutes he happily joins in.  This week the negative “this is boring/I don’t want to” reaction to everything (even the fun things) got under my skin and we really butted heads.   One minute we’d all be working/playing nicely and the next we’d be grumping at eachother.  Once he is actually started on something, he works well and enjoys most of it (especially math), but everytime we start a new thing I got resistance.  At one point I began to seriously think that he’d be happier in public school (which he loved when he went).  I think that our days do not have enough structure and predictability for him and so it generates a lot of negative reactions to anything new.  He does not want to go to school, so we discussed proper ways to express is unsurety (is that a word?) with new things.  It is something I think we will need to continue working on.   

Then friday, we left all that behind and went to a homeschool day at a local amusement park for some real roller coasters.   Those he definately loved. 

 I’m hoping next week is a bit more level–I’m still a bit dizzy.

Jordan has been saving her birthday money and this week decided  she needed a new furry friend.  

After a couple of days, we decided she needed a friend so we went back to the pet store and got her littermate.  We’re pretty sure they’re both girls.  (gulp).  No pictures of Rose yet, but she’s starting to settle in.

Aubrey has been in a real Manga kick lately and has been grabbing any of those funny little backwards picture novels she can find from the library and now she’s drawing.

She calls this one “I’d Rather Be Homeschooling”

I know I’ve mentioned before that Alex hates to write.   He’ll avoid coming up with an original piece of writing by any means necessary.  So, it was with great surprise that I found this under his pillow the other night as I was stopping by to slip $$ under it.  

In case you can’t read, it says “Dir Too Firey, I Los my tooht but can yoow gimee munee”.   When he says lost, me means lost–as in it is gone.  

 The note worked, the tooth fairy left him money

Guess I’ve been busy doing life rather than blogging life…

This week we did a fair amount of school work and also went to park day with our HS group and to the pool where Alex mastered swimming well enough to go off of the diving board and slide in the deep end and swim to the side.  Over and Over, with a big grin on his face.  Jordan was so supportive of him and congratulatory when he did it.  She worked on her swimming, but didn’t feel confident enough to try the slide (which is good, her swimming needs work).   Aubrey worked with Jordan on learning how to swim for almost half our swim time–very sweet to watch, as Aubrey is usually off doing her own high speed thing and generally leaves Jordan in the dust.   

 On the “schoolish” front, Aubrey has been digging in to Algebra and Rosetta Stone Spanish.  She also read “Chew On This” http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618710310/sr=8-1/qid=1155994921/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7302004-7666351?ie=UTF8 and is planning to video herself doing a public service announcment on the horrors of fast food (which up until she read this was completely acceptable food to her).   Uh-oh, I sense a dilemma coming next time we are car schooling and I end up miles away from home with cranky hungry kids.   Oh, and she also read both “Ender’s Game” and “Ender’s Shadow” so she can talk with her father who is listening to them on audiobook on his way to work.  The girl can put away some books when she gets a reading bug. 

 Jordan has mastered her addition facts up through 4 and will start on 5’s next week.  Baby steps–it is so nice to see her feeling like she is successful in math.   We worked a bit on two digit addition and she was totally confused about the difference between 22 being twenty-two and then being 2+2 but we got out the base 10 blocks and I think we made progress.   We also started a Marilyn Burns Geometry unit which I think Jordan and Alex will both enjoy–I love her stuff. 

 We did some more Story of the World and started the history pockets that we are using to go with it.  They are creating kind of a scrapbook in their binders and I was amazed with how much they both got into doing the work.   I’d always avoided that kind of stuff as busywork, but they are far enough away from the standard worksheets that they are a big hit.  As part of our study of ancient times we are making a jello archeological dig.  Three flavors of jello with dinosaur fruit snacks suspended in it and when complete we will do a grid map of each layer (and eat, of course).   Dh raised his eyebrows at the sign on the container in the refrigerator–”Archeological Dig in Progress, DO NOT EAT”

We still have games and projects from our recent delivery that we haven’t touched.   Eh, we’ve got all year. 

Yesterday a big box from Rainbow Resource arrived. I tried to get everything I’d think I’d need for the whole year (laughing yet?) to try to stay on budget, as it seems I nickel and dime throughout the year till I’ve spent way more than I thought I would. I did get a fair amount of hands on and game type stuff so the kids dove into the box with quite a bit of enthusiasm. The big hit so far has been the snap circuit set. Aubrey did the first 15 projects and Alex has been doing a combination of the projects in the book and trying to create his own stuff.

Jordan immediately dove for the books with paper cutting projects on ancient civilizations and the human body–unfortunately they are meant to be photocopied and have stuff on both sides so she hasn’t been able to start on any of them.

There are a fair amount of workbooks as well—Explode the Code, Power of Printing, Editor in Chief, Writing Strands, Word Roots. They are still sitting in a pile untouched.

So far we’ve played Snap it Up and Presto Chango and they both were a hit, though Jordan and Alex are not quite ready to play without significant help from me. I think we’ll spend next week just playing with new stuff.

It has been one of those weeks.  The kids are cranky, I’m cranky and noone is playing or meshing well unless I am completely direction the activity, and then only if I’m lucky do I not get snarkiness over whatever it is.   sigh.   It is one of those weeks where I’m adamant that I must go to the homeschool meeting tonight because I need to be with some adults for a while.

Not that we haven’t had some good times—we had a blast this morning doing “cave” art on some crumpled sacks and everyone was perfectly behaved when we went to the summer movie at the theater this afternoon—but whenever lack of structure hits the volcanoes erupt.   They don’t seem to be able to spend five minutes together without fighting.  I know it is an ebb and flow thing—this too shall pass, but it’s been a rough week.

 I asked Jordan why she felt so grumpy and she said it was so hot outside that the heat was getting into her heart and turning it grumpy.  Yeah, me too darling.