Animals of the World

Grace and Lee played lots of games with Lou this morning. They put together a math puzzle and then played CountDown! They did their normal seat work, went ice skating on the pond, practiced their instruments and took spelling tests. Continuing with our study of the 7 continents we made a poster of animals for each continent. We used old Your Big Backyard magazines for pictures and then researched their continent in the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals. This was great fun for all of us. We learned that their are two kinds of elephants: African elephants and Indian elephants and that it's nearly impossible to find animals that only live in Europe (in Your Big Backyard). The afternoon was a time for rest; both Lou and Ray took a long nap while Grace and Lee built a large farm/zoo from blocks and rubber animals. Then it was time to throw in wood, make pumpkin pies for the church pie sale tomorrow and play outside on the frozen sandpile. Tonight will bring a dreaded trip to the grocery store; see, I made my menus and grocery list according to the wrong week's sale flyer and now I have to do it all over before leaving later.

Family Formation

During tonight's family formation lesson titled "The Call of Samuel":

Dad: Who answered God's call when the Lord rescued him from the belly of a whale?

Lee: The cucumber......uh.....er.......um.......er.....Jonah!

Mom: I think we've watched too many Veggie Tales.

Subject of the Day

Today we started a new unit on the 7 continents. We perused the atlas discussing any pictures of interest, colored and labeled the 7 continents. Grace and Lee loved this project. They worked for over an hour coloring, labeling, comparing the flat map to the globe and looking at the pictures in the atlas. Then they continued with their other seat work, which for some reason is taking them way too long today. Hopefully they'll finish so they have time to play before we head out the grocery store.

We're halfway through, On The Banks of Plum Creek. Laura and Mary made paper liners for the kitchen shelves. Grace wants to make some punched liners for our kitchen shelves; maybe tomorrow.

Bye, Bye Vacation

After what seems like a month of vacation, we are finally getting back to the school thing in a big way. Grace has been reading more difficult picture books, for example, Two Bad Ants. The sentence structure and vocabulary are more difficult, resulting in an unhappy reading experience. We picked out books from our personal library for her to read the rest of the week. We had to compromise a bit; she picked out two and I picked out two. She still leans toward Frog and Toad style books with simple sentence structure. I'm encouraging her to expand her reading to other types of literature and I have to say she is not taking it too well. Lee is diving head first into telling time and loving it. He has a birthday coming up in 11 days. He'll be seven and receiving a BB gun. It's a family tradition that at seven if you've proven to be responsible and mature you get a BB gun. I can't wait to give it to him. Lou has been playing tons of horses and dancing. She will be in her first recital in May and they are already practicing their routines. She will be dancing to Pink Panther and Purple People Eater. Ray (Jack Jack) has been showing us who is boss by screaming his way through the day. We can't seem to get him to stop. Lord help us all! We had corn dogs for supper (I know, not healthy) and he held onto the corn dog side and used the stick as a means to get ketchup to his mouth. That's what he had for supper.....one bite of corn dog and lots of ketchup.

Back From Vacation

I haven't posted in 2 weeks and here's why. January 2-7 was the week of sickness. Everyone but Grace was sick. We were all throwing up and having diarrhea. By weeks end we did about 20 loads of laundry; two of the beds had to be changed 3 times and we went through towels and washcloths like crazy. We ended up leaving for vacation a day late; we scheduled the cabin Up North for January 7-14. We left on Sunday with some us still feeling a little under the weather. But, as Ma Ingalls says, "alls well that ends well". Our vacation was excellent. We ice fished, read, watched Little House on the Prairie, ate doughnuts, went for walks and basically lounged around the cabin. Reality hit hard on Saturday when we returned home. You know...laundry, phone calls to return, meetings to check in on, laundry, school, getting accustomed to schedules again, laundry, mail to read, newspapers to read, computer problems, laundry.... we can't wait to go back next year!

School happened today...enough said.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

"The time is always right to do what is right.." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

My Favorite Blank Calendar

Use these calendars for planning your menus. Keep them for easy planning next year.