Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Feb 13 - Feb 19, 2010

Last week, Grady started on a swim team. He loves it. He went to practice 4 times this week! It's amazing to Jason and me how much he enjoys the water :) His first meet is on March 6 in Anniston, AL. We are all excited!!

On the 14th, I woke up to a heart shaped breakfast made by my wonderful husband. He also made the same breakfast for Madison when she woke up. Madison and I woke up early to attend my sister, Savannah's cheer competition. After the competition we came home and we made a Valentine's dinner together. We tried to make it special for everyone with candle and China plates. The kids love when we eat on our wedding China!

Most of last week was dedicated to Grady and Madison's first science fair projects. Grady tested whether or not the number of folds affect a paper airplane's flight. Madison tested the best shipping material for crackers. They both did awesome and we are super proud of them:)

Grady's display
Grady presenting his project.
Madison's displayMadison presenting her project.

On Saturday, Madison and I went to International Thinking Day with her Brownie Troop. Each troop in the service unit presents a different country. The Girl Scouts get to travel the world in 2 hours. Each country has food to try, facts to learn and swaps to collect. We had a lot of fun! Madison's troop had China. All the girl's wore chopsticks in the hair and had Chinese fans to use during the day. I have pictures, but need to upload them. I'll do that soon, but for now, it's time for life science!

Feb 6- Feb 12





This week we went to the Smyrna Recycling Center.The kids learned how important recycling is. They watched a demonstration on how paper is recycled. We also got to see a big truck big up a dumpster and then return it. Each child got to peek into the recycling bins. Then, we had Mexican for lunch with some of our friends.


In school, we dissected a cow eyeball. We learned about the human eye last week in life science and we watched a dissection online. Grady wasn't all that interested in doing the dissection when I ordered the eyeball, but he ended up enjoying it. Andrew even got into it. Madison loved it. It was very educational for us!

On Friday, Atlanta was lucky enough to get about 4 inches of snow. It was really nice, snowman making snow. We all enjoyed how beautiful it was. The kids were able to play in the snow both Friday and Saturday!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Jan 30 thru Feb 5, 2010

On Monday we did our school work and Madison went to tumbling practice in the evening. She had not been to practice in 3 weeks due to the evil stomach virus that ripped thru our family. She had fun and did a great job. While we were there another girl was practicing her individual routine. Madison saw this and asked if she could compete in individual too. So, now she is going to work on an individual routine. I'm really proud that she wants to get up in front of thousands of people and compete!

On Tuesday, Madison went to Brownies. Her troop is collecting pennies for Haiti. She has been very good about collecting the pennies. She loves to help others :)

Wednesday is our Robert's school day. Grady LOVES his computer game design class. He gets so excited about it!! Madison is enjoying her fashion illustration class. We all love the social time.

The kids have been doing really well with their school work. Grady has been writing!! I can't believe how well he is doing. I really thought, that given his dyslexia, he would hate writing. He does it without complaint and enjoys learning the rules.

This week, I found a swim team for Grady. I have to schedule an evaluation for him and then hopefully, he will be on the team! He is a good swimmer so, I don't think it'll be a problem. We are excited about it as he isn't really into sports, but we feel it's important to be active. Swim team will definitely be active!

Andrew continues his gymnastics class on Thursdays. He is doing Kindergarten work and I realized it isn't challenging enough for him. This lead to me looking for more curriculum for him. I believe that I will use Moving Beyond the Page ages 5-7 for him next year. He seems to be very intelligent and ready for most anything! We will continue to work on letter sounds this year and maybe some adding.

Grady and Madison studied eyes and seeing on Friday. We watched a cow eye dissection online and Madison really wanted to do it herself, so I ordered one! I dissected one in high school, along with a few other things :) I'm so excited to share this with them. I LOVE science!

They continue to do well learning Spanish. I've been really impressed with the program and how useful it it. We are using MochaLive, completely free and online, prefect!

While looking for curriculum for Andrew I found a terrific math program called Teaching Textbooks. It starts with 4th grade and continues thru high school. I am not terrific at Math and this curriculum has cds that teach the student. It's interactive, funny and educational. It's also great for dyslexics as the teacher speaks all the written words. Although Grady has improved his reading by leaps and bounds this year, it's nice to focus on the math for math and not to have to read so much. We are going to use this for Grady next year and maybe Madison. It's such a relief to me to have found this!!

This weekend, we will make our Valentine's and get ready for our class on Wed. And of course, Jason will be smoking some yummy food for the Super Bowl!