WEEK IN REVIEW - WEEK 5

We had another busy week around here!! We started our week with a certain little Miss well on her way to discovering the joys of riding a bike with no training wheels!!

Daddy was close behind to catch her if she fell. You can't see her shirt too well, but it says "My Dad Is Totally Awesome" - this is her favorite shirt - and she doesn't miss telling anyone what her shirt says!! When she found it in the store and I read to her what it said - she looked at me with these big brown eyes and said "I need this shirt because MY dad is!!" Precious.

We put pumpkins on the front step - and I just decided that it's time to say good-bye to the sad looking flowers in the urns. This morning it was 44 degrees!

Banana worked on her multiplication facts using Educational Insights Hot Dots flash cards. She is finally getting these facts mastered!! She enjoys a break from her Teaching Textbooks math lessons here and there - sometimes we do grocery store math - she estimates and adds up each item as we put it in the cart. A perfect math lesson for her that keeps her busy in the store - while I have a good idea how much we are spending!! She LOVES getting to the check out and seeing the total to see how close she came. Boo has to keep a running total of how many items we have placed in the cart.

Boo worked on counting by 10's this week - and we used these base 10 blocks someone had given us. What a great manipulative to understand the concept of 1s, 10s, 100s and 1,000s.

Which then of course led to the building of a castle - we called it the Number Castle - the 1's were the guards around the moat made by the 10's, while the 100's and 1,000's made up the castle itself! It was quite the imaginative math/history (medieval) lesson!

Boo is plugging along with her Explode the Code and Horizon's math.

We "accidentally" had an orange themed lunch one day. Orange cheese, orange jello, orange tangerines, orange carrots - and an orange straw!!

The highlight of the week was our history project. We are learning about the birthplace of Islam and the birth of the Muslim religion - which has led to some wonderful discussions about faith with Banana. We had quite an interesting time contrasting the foundation of the Bible as opposed to the foundation of Muhammed and the Koran. It's so important that our kids firmly know what they believe and why. Educating ourselves about the many religions of the world - and understanding the roots of those religions is crucial to being able to discern the truth of the Bible and being able to eloquently defend their own faith. We learned about the area of Arabia and the desert conditions that the people endured. We made our own edible Oases!!

We used brown sugar for the sand, blue M&Ms for the oasis water, and made palm trees out of tootsie rolls and cut up green gumdrops. The animal cracker camels added the perfect touch!! And then they ate it...... that makes my tummy hurt. Making this oasis was perfect timing with the story that Daddy is reading on Sunday nights - The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Just this past week he read the very descriptive part about Shasta and Bree going through the desert and finally coming upon the oasis.

It's safe to say that the biggest distractions in our school days would be our little four-legged friends. Banana just can't keep her hands off of them! She set Brody up his own little desk beside hers one day.....

and tried to teach him his ABC's. He did rather well. We have the cutest little song that we like called "Dogs in the School" - it's perfect!! There is a line in it that says "as long as there are dogs in the school - they'll have to learn the alphabet too"!! And then it proceeds to "bark" the alphabet - they love that part!

That reminded me of another funny this week - we were in the car listening to that song about dogs in the school and Punkin asked me what CD we were listening to and I TRIED to tell her that it was the CD that came with our Handwriting Without Tears program, but instead I said it's from the "Handwriting FOR Tears" program - we all had a good laugh. Speaking of Punkin - after youth group this week - she came home and wrote THIS POEM - you have to check that out!! They are going through the book Growing Up Christian - another great read to check out. My husband and I started attending a bible study group this week at church discussing the book Do Hard Things - A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. I am very, very, very, very excited about this book! It is exactly what our generation of teenagers need to hear. It's written by two teenage twin boys - it's incredible. Add it to your reading list. I'm thrilled that this is the next book our youth group will be going through together.

In science we have moved on to the muscular system - here we are experimenting with finding our reflexes!

We are steadily making slooooow progress in our Latin studies - but coming along nicely. Banana is learning derivatives of the Latin language and declensions, and is starting to translate. We have made great progress in learning the Lord's prayer in Latin - I think we actually have it down!! Miss Boo found it necessary to model her new boots for the camera. She said something that completely cracked me up this week.

"Mom - I try sooooo hard to be really good, but Banana just keeps messing me up!"

This precious little Banana face?? So hard to believe!! I think it's safe to say that it's a two-way street!

Have a great weekend!!