February 19-21

Mid week and we dove right back into the stories. I am loving our reading time. There can never be enough of it!

We watched a great episode on Minnesota from an aerial series. I asked the kids to draw what they thought was the most interesting, most memorable. And for the first time in ages the three boys drew the same thing – PAUL BUNYAN. So guess what Mommy has to jump on the internet to research and request? I thought for sure one of them would want to learn more about the Mississippi river or… some sort of city building or something but NOPE giant lumberjack and blue ox for the win! So keep an eye out for our further information! Watch the video HERE thanks to the Smithsonian Channel.

The kids and I finished our Chinese New Year binder. It is amazing how much we actually end up doing when we totally get into a topic! So much creativity and learning. You can, of course, check out the resource blog entry HERE.

Thursday was a read to the family sort of day. The twins are totally our leaders of story time and WILLING leaders now!

Emanuel read this one to me!

I found a wonderful resource to split up the portions of a story into sections to map out a story in a castle shape that the twins tried as well. Anything to get us looking at the parts of a story to make more in depth and well thought out stories. You can find this amazing resource HERE thanks to This Reading Mama.

Trinity and I are still trucking through the Valentines books…

And Emanuel and I started a Dinosaur book that was sent to us in a set from Gammie for Valentines. We are going chapter by chapter and then I write down  a couple sentences that Emanuel remembers as the main details and he draws a picture. It is fun reading together and including dinosaurs. I totally want to get back to the dinosaur research we have been doing but I admit it – we have been lazy. The obvious dinosaurs are covered.

We borrowed a series of 10 Veggie Tales videos from the library as well. So each day we watch a video and then I have been printing out Sunday School resources… the little 3 do the colouring page and the twins the 4th page. The next day we do the first two read and discussion pages together. You can find the pages we have been using HERE. I am not including A LOT of religion in our class time but this is a chance to enjoy a wholesome program and reflect on some very important lessons for life and love. Lets use any resource we can to find the best ways to interact with each other.

The kids all finally got around to wearing their Valentines day craft t shirts. Gotta love the heavy Minecraft theme. But it was so much fun and definitely something we want to repeat!

And then…. MORE SNOW… I swear we have feet and feet of snow!!! The kids are getting sick of it even!

The inside of their snow structure looks so cozy!

With more snow comes more inside time… so more books…

Dressing up…

Playing on the electronics…

And then BANG the week is done! The time goes fast but slowly at the same time it seems!!!

February 6-7

It is always a bit of a mental adjust when the inlaws leave for one of their extended leaves. Nice and hard at the same time. Nice, because it puts us back to the 7 of us working as a family unit again but hard because man do we miss them! We have been promised that they will have internet and may Skype and I even had Ken slip in a gift for the birthday girl – it was Nana’s birthday on the 6th. Baba always gets her the best presents – a whole beach!!!

We had a bit of major birthday excitement. The day before the last of the gifts Aunty Holly and Uncle James had sent from Canada got here. So on the 6th we opened the gifts from them AND from Gammie! Talk about a list completer day! Emanuel got the Pokemon he had been dying to have, Gavin Pokemon cards. Zander even got a brand new Lego set. We snuck out earlier and Ken got each of the girls a little something so they would not feel totally left out. 5 pleased kids I am telling you!

Think he wanted it???

Thanks Aunty Holly, Uncle James and Cousin Jimmie

Echo and her pony

We really took a day off school for the most part BUT that did not stop progress on the car. Emanuel and Ken are a building force here. With lots of interested eyes keeping a careful watch on the progress. After all… the race is on the weekend!!!!!

The Olympics start on the 7th and while we are not doing a whole unit on it we are cherry picking things here and there. Of course covering Russia and some of the winter sports we could watch. Xfinity has a section of clips from the Olympics which the kids have taken to watching every morning and discussing for fun. It has actually been a little difficult finding information about Russia for the age range we are working with here. Once again Activity Village has been a great resource you can find their Sochi section HERE. Or go to Art for Kids and look through their drawings HERE. They have covered a few of the sports with some how to illustrations.

We totally started with a couple of sports we were able to follow drawings with. Ski Jumping and Bobsled. This is actually the first year of women being allowed to compete in ski jumping at the Olympics. Zander was quite upset about this… he said girls can do anything so they must have been missing out not letting them try sooner!!! Talk about proud momma!

Of course we looked up our two sports on the internet… and I will share our links!

Ski Jumping:

• Activity Village HERE
• Art for Kids HERE
• Infoplease article HERE
• We of course had to do the video thing… an Olympic trials

Bobsled

• Activity Village HERE (video at the very bottom)
• Art for Kids HERE
• Library.thinkquest HERE
• Infoplease HERE
• Kids Britannica HERE
• Our video from youTube with Chris Lori

• Equally exciting is that my own cousin Brad Reinsch is listed as 4th ranked bobsledding pilot in Canada!! Very cool! 

Emanuel also drew up his paint job on his car. It is a Batman themed piece and looking AMAZING!

We are preparing for Valentines with tiny cards printed off the Activity Village site. I love printing off stuff on cardstock (best price ever at Sam’s for a ton of it!!) and letting the kids create their own little gifts. These are for them to make for their siblings. We have several purchased ones (or given to us from Gammie) to use to mail out. Another thing to get done and mailed!

The kids lucked out and Nana left her iPad behind. So we are having some kid together time of course!  With limited fighting thankfully!!!!

On our own once again… yup yup!

November 4-6

One day and counting until Aunty Karyn gets here. What to do what to do??? Well not only is Aunty Karyn visiting and fall here to stay BUT it is also the month of American Thanksgiving so it was surely time to be… Thankful!

It was time to look at our Australia unit thanks to Little Passports. I got some books from the library and hunted down a few printables. I have a blog entry just with our resources from that short mini unit HERE. They even included a fun scratch card craft.

We drew up some “what if” stories about what sort of amazing and impossible adventures we could get up to with Aunty Karyn if we could do ANYTHING we could. Of course we photocopied the twins and took pictures of the littles to be able to give the originals to Karyn.

With visit imminent it was simply time to  get the house under control, tidy up and do our regular homeschooling bits and go to bed with the knowledge that by the afternoon on the 5th we will be up the EIGHT people in the house!!

Talk about excitement when we got Karyn home! Baba and I went to the airport to collect her. Her flights was delayed (of course) but we managed to meet up quite easily. Thus begins a week of fun with Aunty Karyn and a time of low school work levels but high levels of fun! I love how we all congregate around our electronics… here the girls were watching My Little Pony.

This quickly morphed into EVERYONE watching Aunty Karyn’s iPad!

Our first FULL day with Aunty Karyn started with stories and reading in the livingroom.

Then running out (for the kids) to enjoy the very first and VERY minor snow fall.

Trinity had special time with her God Mommy and got her hair braided.

And in the afternoon there was time for boardgames!

That evening we had a rather major Echo milestone – her very first big girl bed!!!! Of course she came out MULTIPLE times that night but definitely a success!!!

Trinity’s old bed

A handmedown from cousin Zachary!

Of course the girls had to end their day with some Aunty Karyn time…

And we still have DAYS to go!!!!