Weekly wrap-up

This has been a fun week for us here.  We've had the added job of taking care of Tinkerbell as she recovered from her vet visit, went out to play with some new friends, and did our normal lessons.  However, I am going to mainly talk about the academics.

This week we wrapped up our visit to Australia in history.  Jojo had fun and we decided to dig into it pretty well, taking a few weeks to learn about the animals, plants, and culture in general.  We wrapped up Australia by making a shadowbox of Australian ocean life using a few household supplies we had on hand and some creativity.  It is nothing spectacular, as we are out of scotch tape so I had to be creative in how we attached some pieces (particularly the "floating" ones, I used a safety pin to attach the yarn to the animals and then punched holes in the box and tied the string that way instead of a couple pieces of tape holding it all on) but she had a good time.

Ignore the face she's making, she has hit THAT stage. *sigh*  As you can see, it isn't fancy at all and you can definitely tell a 5 year old made it with minimal help from mommy.

In math, she FINISHED her math K materials and we are now waiting for approval, ordering, and delivery of 1st grade math.  It should be all taken care of in the next 2 weeks I'm guessing, so until then she and I will work together in a Spectrum math workbook that was given to us by a friend and I shall introduce her to my friends also known as the addition and subtraction flash cards.

She is resisting phonics and language arts still, but we are making progress there.  She did 2 units in language arts this week after I discovered that she will listen to stories and poetry if I sit down and start reading it to her little brother.  She's done that whole "no I am NOT listening to you read" pout when I say that I'm going to read, and then when I tell her fine I'll read to Bub then sit with him on the floor and read her school stories to him she'll slowly make her way over and be next to me looking at the pictures and listening (and interrupting with commentary about the story and questions as needed) by the end of the second paragraph I'm reading out loud.  So I'm taking advantage of this discovery and working at an accelerated pace through the material to "catch up" in the curriculum (not hard to do, the material has us doing a story for 3 days straight and covers skills that she's already familiar with so I have no issues condensing the work to a story or 2 each day).  She's making excellent progress in her penmanship as well, and I anticipate that she'll finish her workbook by the new year and move on to just working on copying words and sentences daily.

Health right now is being covered by involving her in caring for her brother, cooking, and taking care of the dog.  She really likes this, and is easily doing daily health lessons through this method.

She also has finally figured out how to pedal her bike that she got for her birthday last month, which you already know I'm logging for physical education.  She also is starting yoga and stretching every morning to start the day.

That my dear friends is what our week has looked like here.  We've had a LOT of fun and learned a lot of things.  I didn't think she'd do this well in schoolwork, but she's pulling it off nicely.

Fun times here

So we got a dog last month, as you know from my last post.  A 10 month old Yorkie-poodle mix we named Tinkerbell.  She has definitely made life different here.

She doesn't like her dog food too much, but is getting used to it.  She isn't terribly fond of PJ, after he tugged on her ears and tail a couple times (totally expected that he'd be curious and tug, and totally expected that she isn't too fond of him now because of it but we're teaching him to be be gentle and her to tolerate him).  She is very protective of our bedroom and growls at the girls when they dare to enter until she's told to knock it off.

And then there is THIS week.  Yesterday she went to get spayed and taken care of at the vet.  You know the drill, dental, blood tests, fecal sample, the works to make sure she's healthy.  All her boosters are done for the year, tests all came back perfect, she is now spayed.  However, there were a few little glitches.  She is NOT a puppy.  She's about 7 years old, and was horribly neglected by her previous owner.  The fact that she had lost several teeth and we had to have the vet pull several more made that pretty obvious.  The vet also shaved her matted fur for us after seeing how I've been carefully removing the worst matting with my hair cutting scissors.  Needless to say, she hates me right now for all she had done in the last 24 hours, and we spent a lot of money.  But, it is worth it to know that she is healthy and taken care of properly.

As far as the kids, well that has been fun too.  Missa is being harassed and bullied at school and says that the school doesn't believe her about it and are ignoring her complaints.  Liddy is a drama queen as usual, screaming and yelling and lashing out physically whenever she doesn't get EXACTLY her way.  Kimmy is loving school and bringing home good grades.  Jojo is being VERY 5, and gives me a run for my money some days.  And then there is PJ, pulling up and trying to walk all over the place.  He will pull up and then let go and fall over.  Then he will start screaming if he sees someone watching him LOL  He also is eating as well as his sisters, and exactly what they eat sometimes.  Yes, he is moving on to table foods now by his own choosing.  He loves pancakes and waffles, and especially enjoys dropping them on the floor to watch the dog come running to eat them.  He enjoys apple juice diluted in a sippy cup too.

Oh, and yesterday we went on a field trip with OHVA.  Since Jojo is enrolled in OHVA for her K year, we are required to attend 4 face-to-face (F2F) events each school year.  Her KRA-L test would have counted as the first one, however we had a baby with chicken pox (caught it from his oldest sister who picked it up at school, luckily none of the others got it) so we had to do that testing online instead.  So, I have 4 field trips I need to do for Jojo to get her required 4 F2F events.  Yesterday was the first one, and her big sisters didn't have school that day so they got to join us.  We all went to the pumpkin patch.

Yes, I took 5 kids by myself to the pumpkin patch.  I'm slightly out of practice since school started, I don't typically have to take more than just 2 kids anywhere (or 3 if someone is sick at home from school).  I honestly dreaded this trip, and even moreso when the vet said that the only time they could get Tink in for her spay was on the same day as the trip to the pumpkin patch. *sigh*  It went well though, I laid down the rules real early and made sure they flat out KNEW them.  I assigned a buddy system for them to make it easier for me to keep track of them, and off we went.  2 hours they spent running through the corn maze, in the enchanted forest, and then hunting through the pumpkins to find their perfect ones to carve this weekend for Halloween.  Here's a couple pictures from that trip. :)

I do not approve of this stroller mommy!

From left to right- Jojo, Liddy, Kimmy, Missa

At the mini maze, yes PJ lost his socks as usual