Week 12

We woke to snow this morning.  It's not much but it is colder outside.

We had a nice Sabbath rest.  Since the rain was freezing our company couldn't make it.  But Brandon and his friend drove up just as we got home from church.  So we had help eating all the food I had made.

Brandon and Nicole played lots of games with Daniel and Leah.

Here they are enjoying a game of Sorry.  Rico got into the action as well.  He watched them play, then hopped onto the board where he proceeded to move the game pieces to different spots.  I don't think he was just playing with the pieces.  It looked like he was imitating what they were doing as he didn't just take the markers, he moved them to different spaces.  

We are done with week 12 in school.  That is a third of the way through the year.  It has been going so well this year.

I won't share too much of what we did this week as much of it is the same.  

In history we studied the Indian Empire, their three main emperors, and how and why the British merchants were able to take over the rule of India.  The book The Story of the World is very interesting.  Both children (and even I) are remembering much of what we read.

In Science we studied Myriapods (centipedes and millipedes), mollusks, and cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones).  Many of which the children remember seeing first hand when we visited the ocean last year.

I enjoyed listening to Mendelssohn's Wedding March as I have always liked it.  I didn't realize that he was the one who wrote it.

In read-aloud we finished Madeline Takes Command.  I got a book Shipwrecked by Rhoda Blumberg, a true story of a fourteen year old Japanese boy who was shipwrecked, found by American sailors, and became the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States, from the library and started reading it out load last week.  We will be studying the history of Japan this coming week so it will help in our understanding of the Japanese.

Week 11

On Sabbath we enjoyed watching this fellow eating from my woodpecker suet feeder.

We have seen the smaller woodpeckers on the feeder but never a big one so we were all excited to watch him.  He was so big.  When I looked in my Bird of the Dakotas field guide I couldn't find what kind of woodpecker it was so I looked online and found it on this website.  It is a Pileated Woodpecker.  I never heard of it.  

This past week Tim purchased eleven blue spruce trees that he planted on the south west corner of our farm.  

I took this picture but it is a little foggy out there today and you can't really see them.  I should have taken pictures one of the days that he planted them as it was sunny and warm.  We set them out into two staggered rows, six in one and five in another, and planted them about twenty feet apart so they have plenty of room to grow without hitting each other.  Our plan is to plant more trees over there as we can.

We had a wonderful Sabbath.  In church we worshiped in song, prayer, and words.  Curt gave a great message that he "threw together" on Friday when he was asked to fill in for the other speaker who was not feeling well.  He spoke on keeping our faith through hard times.  After church we enjoyed getting to know a new couple in our midst.  

Whitney and Ryan came over to spend the afternoon with us.  I had made "Creamy Dreamy Chicken Lasagna" for lunch along with sweet potatoes, corn, salad, apple cobbler, and pumpkin pie.  In school on Friday Daniel and I had made "Turkish Delight" which I think I ruined as I had to improvise and added too much lemon extract.  

After lunch into the evening we played several games, Snapshots Across America, Racko, Mexican Train, and Chicken Foot.  I purchased Snapshots Across America and Racko at the Home School Convention last year.  We are enjoying them.

Snapshots Across America is a board game.  The board is a map of the United States.  We each get a car and six cards.  The cards are a combination of tourist destination locations in different states, air fare, cruise, or train tickets, and cards to cancel others' vacations.  The object is to visit and play seven destination cards before your opponents.  If you are not lucky enough to get air, train, or cruise cards you must drive, one state a turn, to get to your destination.  It is fun, educational, and goes along with our study of United States history this year.   Racko is also fun and educational in a math sort of way.

Week 11 in school went by fast.  In Bible we learned James 2:1-4 and reviewed chapter one.  We sang "Am I a Soldier of the Cross" written by Isaac Watts.  

In history we studied about Russia and Peter the Great, the Persian Empire, and the Ottoman Turks, hence the Turkish Delight experiment.

We studied insect metamorphosis, arachnids, and crustaceans in science.  The children made marshmallow spiders and clay crabs.  I really should take more pictures.

Daniel did mostly review in math.  Leah started multiplication which has been helped along by Math-U-See's skip counting songs on their cd.  Since she is an auditory learner this really helps her.

Daniel studied English artists, listened to Mendelssohn's Hebrides, Song Without Words, and Venetian Gondolier's Song, and drew some young and old portraits in art.

We have continued to read Madeleine Takes Command which the children always beg for another chapter so we are almost finished with it for Read-Aloud.  In individual reading the children are choosing books from  

"book basket", books we check out from the library, as well as books I assign for them to read.  It seems they are enjoying reading more and more.

This week brings us to the end of the election.  It will be exciting to see who wins locally and nationally.