Weekly Wrap-Up 10/18/13

This weekend, we took a little trip to our friends' farm for a Fall Harvest Festival. It was such a beautiful day and everyone had such a great time. They had a bounce house, face-painting, pumpkin-painting, sack races, yummy food, a pumpkin slingshot, tractor rides and my absolute favorite - tricolor Rice Krispie treats made to look like candy corn. What can I say, I love Rice Krispie treats!  Hats off to my dear friend who always  throws a great party! 

Monday was my sweet hubby's birthday so the kids and I made this little message out of their bodies! The best part of this gift was how hysterically we laughed while trying to pose them. All the "Her bottom's in my face" and "Hurry, I'm falling over!" had me in stitches. We had to redo a couple of shots because I was giggling so hard, I shook the camera. Dad LOVED his surprise so it was definitely a winner!

As for our schooling, we learned about cold-blooded animals and camouflage in our Magic School Bus science. We made some invisible ink out of equal parts of water and baking soda. I was a little skeptical that this simple solution would do the trick, but it totally worked! I have a feeling there will soon be lots of little secret messages around our house.

For his writing assignment, he wrote about what he would do if he were invisible for a day. Get it, camouflage and being invisible??? Here's what he wrote:

How adorable is this!

In art, the kids made a color wheel and then practiced designing circles using primary, secondary, warm and cool colors. Miss 7th grade loves art, but I think she enjoyed the company more!

 Well, that's it for us on a pretty slow week! I hope you had a great one!

 

Weekly Wrap-Up (4 States, the Ocean, the Desert and Grandparents' house!)

Weekly Link-Up. Click above to visit other bloggers.

Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to go on a women's retreat with my church. Unfortunately that means another double-wrap-up week this week, but it was completely worth it! On top of an outstanding spiritual experience and bonding with so many wonderful women I now call my friends, I also got to try my hand at rifle shooting, archery and horseback riding. This, my friends, is how girls should get away!

As for our homeschool weeks: 

Week one (Sep 30-Oct 4) consisted of our US Geography studies of New York and New Jersey and our Magic School Bus lesson on coral reefs. Now, just to clarify, we covered much more than that, but I didn't think ya'll would be too excited to see photos of my kiddos filling out their math textbooks or writing a paper. So, here are the highlights. For our State Food/Movie night, we ate Subway subs in honor of New York and Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies in honor of New Jersey.

For science, we got to make a wave in a bottle out of three simple ingredients: water, oil and food coloring. It's so simple! Just pour oil (We just used Canola oil) into a clear container and fill about 1/2 full. Mix the blue food coloring into the water and then fill the container with the water. Then the oh-so-important final step: screw the lid on - VERY tightly! When you slosh it back and forth, it almost looks like slow motion giving that calm effect of rocking waves. My little guy is keeping it in his room, and so far, there's no 'ocean' in my carpet. I'm thinking I may need to sneak that little number out of there before we have a crisis, though. LOL!

Week 2, Oct.7-11, took us to the great states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Now we couldn't sample goodies from Pennsylvania without chowing down on some yummy Hershey chocolate and a delectable Philly Steak and Cheese sandwich. 

Since Delaware hosts an annual Pumpkin Festival, we ate pumpkin cupcakes from that Pinterest recipe using only 2 ingredients. Ok, sorry to burst the bubble, but I thought they came out really thick. I would have to add an egg or two to make it fluffier. Just my opinion! My sweets-deprived kids however, devour anything that sounds like it has sugar! So we slathered on some cream cheese frosting and they gobbled those babies right up!

Our Magic School Bus study of the desert included a fun activity making sand dunes. We poured a bag of sand (a souvenir from our recent vacation) into a shallow container and used a 'bendy' straw to blow the sand into heaps. Voila! Sand dune!  If you try this, you may want a slightly deeper container. When I tested it, no issues. In the hands of a 7-yr-old boy, however. Let's just say there was a lot of clean up on aisle one!

Our weather has been so beautiful, we decided to do our reading outside. We put the picnic blanket under a shade tree and snuggled in with our books only to find ourselves, moments later, swarmed with gnats! They were crawling on our books, our clothes, and I don't even want to think about how many were hosting a party in my hair! Yuck! My girls lasted about three minutes and went back inside. My son gave me those puppy eyes and really wanted to stay so I begrudgingly stayed out of guilt hung out there with him for as long as I could stand it (maybe 5 more minutes) Oh well, we tried!

October means 'school photos' around here so while the kids were playing outside, I snapped some practice shots. Not sure we're ready for the real thing, but we had fun anyway!

hammin' it up!

Beautiful!

At that age where she hates her picture taken, but she was being such a good sport!

Mr. Man feeling crafty on Wed night. He made his own robot buddy! We just had to put this pic in!

Friday, we packed our remaining schoolwork and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin on the lake for a short visit. The kids got to go for a paddle boat ride, go fishing, lay in the hammock and just relax for an afternoon. That is until they got back to the car and their mean-ole-teacher made them get some more work done. Ah, the hardships of traveling with your teacher!

So how is your year going so far? What fun things have you experienced together? Leave me a comment below and share!

Weekly Wrap Ups 9/20/13 and 9/27/13

Well, this is a two-week wrap up. I caught a nasty cold last weekend and spent most of my time in bed so blogging just had to wait. So here's a recap of our last two weeks.

For art this year, we are using See The Light Art Class DVDs. While my second grader isn't quite at this level, he usually participates as best he can. This week, there was a bonus lesson using chalk pastels. Here are my 5th and 7th graders' masterpieces. Beautiful!

Miss 5th Grade is doing Apologia's Human Anatomy course this year and we had an experiment relating to Ancient Egypt to compare an apple that was left out for a week untouched and one covered in baking soda and salt.

 

Her hypothesis was that the apple in the soda and salt would be preserved and the other would rot. However at the end of the week, here's what they looked like! The 'preserved' apple actually shrank to about half its original size!

 

This week, we made an edible cell out of Jello and Candy! Our most delicious science experiment yet!

 Completely unrelated, but had to put in this Lil' Bitty Snake we found on our back patio :) My little vet-to-be was cooing like it was a newborn baby! Mom, however, drew the line on bringing this little 'sweetheart' into the house!!!

For our state studies, we covered Vermont and New Hampshire and on our pizza state food/movie Friday night we dined on pancakes with real maple syrup and splurged on delicious Ben & Jerry's ice cream. So yummy.

 

Week two included Connecticut and Rhode Island. After our books and notebooking pages, we took a video tour of the Newport Mansions and all the "Whoa!" and "Oh yeah! I want to live there!" from my kids was hilarious. Since Connecticut is the home of the first hamburger, we had a yummy meal of hamburgers and Coffee Milkshakes in honor of Rhode Island. Then we had to wind down some very hyper children!

Last week's Magic School Bus science topic was backyard habitats and we got to make this cool bird feeder that we hung from our porch. Little man was excited to see birds swooping down to our porch to check it out!

This week's science topic was the Rainforest. We read A Rainforest Habitat, watched the Travel With Kids episode on Costa Rica (If you are studying Geography with younger children, you HAVE to check out this series!), saw the video and did the quiz on BrainPop Jr, and made a Rainforest in a Bowl to see the water cycle in action! Unfortunately my "all-boy" 7-yr-old wiped out on his bike and slid across our gravel drive in between building it and getting to see the water droplets so it was a little less awe-inspiring than I'd hoped.

Adding some rainforest animals

A slight damper on our week! 

Best buddies that make it all better. Teddy and our newest family member: Bamboo the panda

Well, I hope you all had a safe and healthy couple of weeks!