Weekly Update April 4-11, 2010

Sunday, was Madison's 8th birthday. Yes, it was also Easter this year. Since she had her bday sleepover last week, we had a family dinner on Sunday. Madison decided to embrace the Easter theme. We had ham for dinner and a Easter egg hunt! She's such a sweet girl!

waiting to open the gifts!

This week was Spring Break for most of the kids in the area. Not us. We had a whole month of beach vacation from mid-August to mid-September. We really needed to continue our lessons, so we did. We are planning a trip the end of May, so don't feel sorry for us:)

Madison finished up her Singapore 2A and will move into 2B on Monday. She's about half way through LLATL 2. She'd doing great and reading well. She also had 2 cheer practices, a tumble class and a horse riding lesson this week. Next weekend, she has her first individual cheer competition!!!

Grady is almost done with his autobiography on the Wright Brothers. He has one chapter left!! That's amazing for him. He's dyslexic and has made huge strides this year. He is reading on grade level!! We are so excited :) I started looking for his next reading book and soon found out that it is not in print anymore and it was only printed in a small printing. This book is hard to find and about $20 for a soft copy! CRAZY! He is progressing well in math. Decimals are easy for him. He'll be done with Singapore 4B in a flash!

This week, both Grady and Madison started Sequential Spelling. We are all loving it. They are exicited to learn how to spell big words! Next week, we will begin our Egypt studies and finish it up with a trip to a local museum with Egyptian artifacts.

Andrew's doing great in his Singapore KB math book. He's adding problems like 2+5, etc. Not bad for a child who would be in pre-k this year, if in public school. He's also reading simple books,
like those on starfall.com. It's amazing! So far, he's been the easiest to teach. He just seems to get it. I'm sure that's because he has 2 older siblings whom he has grown up watching learn.

I have been busy with yard work, planning our vacation to the Outer Banks, cleaning, sewing, cooking, you know, the usual :) Daddy was gone most of the week, flying. We had a good week and a beautiful Saturday with most of it spent outside in our backyard as a family:)

Update

I haven't posted in a while because I have been busy.

Grady was sick all last week. He had some virus that caused the lymph nodes in his neck to swell pretty badly. He didn't get to swim at all last week. He also didn't do too much school as he couldn't talk. He's much better this week:)

Madison had her birthday sleepover last Friday. She turns 8 on Sunday, Easter Sunday. I thought that sharing her bday with Easter would be a downer, but she has risen to the occasion. We are having a traditional Easter dinner with family and egg hunt, per her request :) She really is the sweetest girl ever!

Madison and Jason went to their first Father/Daughter Dance with the Brownies last weekend. Jason has always had to work, but this year they were able to go. They had fun and finished the evening with dinner at a Sushi restaurant.

As far as school goes, we finished up our Life Science book today! Grady and Madison decided to study Chemistry next year. I'll order this soon as the curriculum is 25% off in April. Madison is nearing the end of her math book. She's working on division right now. Grady is almost done reading his book about the Wright Brothers. He's working on decimals right now in Math and finding them very easy, too easy. I would like to skip it, but he needs to go over to make sure he can handle it later in life.

Next week, we will start a spelling curriculum and a study on ancient Egypt that we will conclude with a trip to the Carlos Museum.

Andrew is doing great. He's flying through his math book and is learning short vowel sounds. He has only one more to learn on Monday.

Both Madison and Andrew painted the clay pieces they made in clay class on Wed. they got to bring them home! We are now the proud owners of 2 clay bird feeders, 2 clay frogs, 2 clay maracas and various other pieces:) I will try to take a pic for you all soon. They are too cute.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all for now.

March 7-12, 2010

Grady had his first swim meet on Saturday. He did a fantastic job and we are all proud of him. It was a learning experience for us all! A long day with a lot of fun :)

In math this week, Grady started on Singapore 4B. Madison is finishing up 2A and Andrew started Singapore Kindergarten B. Everyone's making good progress and mastering thier lessons.

In language arts, Grady started reading a book about the Wright Brothers. We are hoping to plan a trip to the Wright Muesuem in Kitty Hawk, NC. I did some research and it's 10 hours from here. I'm not sure if we'll drive or fly, but we are hoping to visit soon. Madison and Andrew are plugging along in thier work as well.

We started learning about cells this week. G&M are fascinated and are begging to learn more. We studied organelles and colored animal cells today. I love biology, so Mama's happy :)

Spanish continues. We are working on plurals on Live Mocha. We are all enjoying it. It's getting harder, but still manageable. I'm wondering how far we will get before it's too hard. I guess will see!

Wednesday, our session 4 started at our homeschool enrichment program. I'm contuining to teach pre-k. Madison and Andrew are taking a clay class together and Grady is in his second session of computer game design class. I was so proud of Andrew. The clay class is his first class without me. He did so well and listened to his teacher!! Proud mommy moment:)

That's all for now!

March1-5, 2010

This week we had more snow. No one was excited. I think we are all ready for Spring. We watched the snow fall, but we didn't go outside to play in it. The snow was really wet and it had been raining before the snow started, so it was really not good snow to play in. Jason took this picture of a bird sitting in a tree outside of the window while the snow fell. It was the only picture we took of that snowfall. I guess we are over the snow this year!


We had the week off from Robert's school and it was nice to not have to get out in the cold and snow on Wednesday morning :) On Thursday, we took a field trip to a rock quarry. It was pretty entertaining. We even got to be there while they blasted some rock. This only happens 3 times a week so we got really lucky. This quarry mines granite mainly for landscaping. Here are some pics of that:

Just the tires on this truck were taller that any of the dads!


A huge pile of rocks!

All the children got to collect rocks!

A look into the quarry.

Friday, we had a productive school day. Grady and Madison are finishing up their math books. Thankfully, I ordered the next books for them already! We finished up a unit study on the human body today as well. G&M know a lot about this subject! They really enjoyed it and are looking forward to our study of cells :) We press on in Spanish. They are doing awesome. I didn't know how it would go, but so far so good! Andrew is working on finishing up his Kindergarten work. He is waiting on his next math book to arrive and we are going over the letters he still doesn't know. At this point he's not missing many, so that's good. He's even starting to read 3 and 4 letter words! Grady and Madison also did a lesson in their LLATL 2 and 4 language arts books. Grady's new reading book, "Wilbur and Orville Wright," made it here today, so we will get started on it soon.

After our schooltime, Madison had her horse riding lesson. This was her thrid lesson and she is improving. She did a lot of trotting today and learned how to clean the horse's hooves. She was looking forward to the nail part, so we were both glad she got to do that!

Tomorrow is Grady's first swim meet!! We are all excited, despite having to get up very early :)

Feb 20- Feb 27, 2010

On Monday we went to Fernbank. They have a new exhibit about natural disasters. It was the perfect day to go. There was hardly anyone there and the exhibit was great. We all enjoyed it and learned a lot!

On Tuesday, Jason was TDY'd to DC. That means he had to fly to DC and sit in a hotel until they needed him. He was gone for 5 days. Thankfully, he had a trip assigned so that he could get out of the hotel. Our life went on as normal, but we all missed Daddy.

Wednesday was our last class of session 3 at the Roberts school. Grady's class will continue into session 4. Madison and Andrew will take a clay class together after our Pre-K/K class.

Saturday, Madison had a cookie booth sale. It was an adventure getting her there. After a week on my own, I guess my brain was a little tired. I drove to the wrong place and then couldn't find the right one for a while. We finally got there about 10 minutes late. I really dislike being late! After the cookie sale we went home and Daddy called and said he was on his way home :) Madison had a sleepover at the zoo that night, so we left the boys at home and I drove Madison to the zoo. On Sunday, we picked Madison up and walked around the zoo for about 2 hours. Madison told us what she learned and we saw lots of animals.

We have been doing well in our school lessons. I ordered some curriculum to finish out the year. Now, we just wait on it and finish up what we are working on. Everything's going well and the kids are learning lots :)

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!