September 20 - 24

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston got crowned a king this week for his Shakespeare class after watching, listening to and reading 17 Shakespeare plays.  The other kids in the classroom had to gravel while he sat on his throne and wore a crown.  Pretty cool! 

MARISSA

Marissa is so excited about her assignments for her class on Thursdays.  She has been diagramming sentences, looking up parts of speech and writing sentences for homophones, and memorizing the 50 states and their location on a map.  She even asked me to take her to the library this week to study where it is more quiet.  So cute! She also worked on "alk" words using different fonts with a chalk marker.  

CALEB

Caleb attended his first day of Ninja Warehouse this week.  It was a lot to learn and he was in the bigger kid class, but he did great.  He's excited to work on getting stronger and doing hard things in his PE class this year.  

Caleb has also been helping me with shopping this year.  He makes our grocery list and marks off items as we put them in the cart.  He's a super good helper and it's been a great way for him to practice writing a little bit more during the week.  

OTHER

MATH & COOKING

We practiced math skills making homemade pizza dough with our favorite toppings.  The kids LOVED them and decided homemade pizza should be a regular item on the menu.  

September 13 - 17

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston has been working on reading and writing assignments this week.  He finished reading "Red Scarf Girl" and also completed a few writing assignments for his "Key of Liberty" and "Shakespeare" classes as well as writing assignments in his Language Arts book.  

MARISSA

Marissa has been working hard on memorizing times tables.  We got a program called Times Tales to help her retain them better.  It has proven to be a really good fit.  Not only does she really enjoy the program, it's actually helping her to learn and memorize her facts.  She didn't even mind a timed test, which is usually a cause for a lot of stress and anxiety.  

CALEB

Caleb LOVES math!  He does MathSeeds, has a couple of workbooks, plays all sorts of math games, reads Life of Fred with the family and other math books and overall just really enjoys and follows the concepts of mathematics really well.  This week he worked on completing lessons in MathSeeds.  He also created a drawing on a chalkboard and demonstrated the similarities using a ven diagram.  He LOVES board games and strategy and even though he's the youngest in the family, can hold his own when it comes to competitive math games.  

OTHER

BIG LIFE JOURNAL

We started using Big Life Journal.  Marissa is using the kid version, Preston has the teen version and Caleb is working with me on separate sheets of paper until his writing is a little bit more advanced.  We've been listening to the Big Life Podcast and then completing the journal pages that go along with it.  The kids LOVED listening to the story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay.  We ended up getting a book from the library to read as well.  Marissa and Caleb also ended up making their own creation using recycled materials.  They made a fancy bird hotel, with several perching areas, nesting areas and feeding places.  

September 6 - 10

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston has been reading, listening to and watching Shakespeare like a mad man this week.  They are doing a "Race to Royalty" in his Shakespeare class and he has to read, listen to or watch 17 Shakespeare classes.  He's almost finished and will get crowned king this coming Thursday during class.  He definitely prefers the comedies to the tragedies, but he is learning a lot from both.

MARISSA

Marissa decided to catch up with some more projects from her Doodle Crates and made homemade soap this week.  She did it all by herself and was pretty proud to show me all the different kinds she created.  

CALEB

Caleb created a really cool Lego creation with random pieces this week.  It had moving parts and all sorts of mini figures, but I can't remember them all now.  

We also had some fun reading "Put Me in the Zoo" and "I Want to Be Somebody New" and then creating our own spotted animals.  Marissa and Caleb had a lot of fun using dot markers to make colorful spots on many different pages.  

OTHER

September 11

We spent some time talking about September 11 and what happened on that day.  We discussed different kinds of heroes. I read the transcript from Flight 93 with Preston (the other two are a little too sensitive for those kind of details right now).  It was fun to get pictures from grandma and grandpa who happened to be in Washington D.C. on September 11th this year.  They took a very cool picture of a flag draped over the spot on the Pentagon where the plane crashed as well as a picture of a ceremony with a big flag that was raised using two firetruck ladders.

August 30 - September 3

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston attended a kickoff for classes he will be taking this fall on Thursday.  It was all all day event with hiking, biking, climbing and repelling.  They also did a service project, piling up big sticks and logs to prevent forest fires at a local bible camp.  They had a book discussion, activities like archery, 9 square, water balloon volleyball and nerf gun wars.  Dinner, dessert, a speaker and then a dance.  It was an incredible day and he can't wait to get started with classes next week!

9 Square

Repelling

Rock climbing

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was completing her Doodle Crate that came in the mail for her tech class.  It was making her very own working clock.  She got to paint and design it and then line it all up and put the parts together to make it work.  It was so fun for her and now hangs proudly in her bedroom!

CALEB

Caleb decided he wanted to do a Kiwi Crate when he saw Marissa's arrive so we pulled out the box (we have a few left in the attic from previous years).  He chose one that was all about stars and the solar system.  Caleb got to make a lantern with constellations on it.  We pulled out a book with constellations and he chose 4: The Big Dipper, Scorpius, Leo and Orion.  He did a great job and his lantern is so much fun, especially in the dark.  

He also made a gear that turns around to show how the earth rotates and orbits the sun and how the moon orbits the earth.  It was a little technical, but he loved it once we figured it all out.  

When we were reading all about stars, one of the optional activities was to make s'mores in a homemade solar oven...so of course we had to try that.  That may have been the highlight of the whole day!  ;) 

OTHER

Caleb is obsessed with gardening, cooking and nature in general.  We didn't get much of a garden going this year because it was super busy, but we did end up with a couple tomato plants that grew on their own.  Caleb was thrilled to picked a cherry tomato from his plant this week!  We also are lucky to have friends who own a farm close by.  They invited us to go pick peaches.  We've been enjoying peaches, peaches and cream and peach cobbler for a week! Caleb also got really excited to find a ladybug outside one day.  

As part of Caleb's garden, he used his screen time allotment this week to build a garden in Minecraft.  He also put a dog named "Pinkie" in his garden because Marissa's favorite stuffed animal is a dog named "Pinkie."  Cute kids! 

Marissa loves her bunnies!  We had them neutered this week.  Well, that was the plan at least.  We were all surprised to get a call from the vet telling us one of the bunnies is a girl.  Their names are Oreo and Ash and we were told they were both boys.  Ash is actually a girl.  The kids could not believe it and said her name must really be Ashley.  We still call her "Ash" for short though.  

Caleb built his Minecraft Lego set that he earned for finishing his curriculum last week and Preston filmed him to put on his YouTube channel.