blogging slacker!

ack! we've totally not been doing school, i'm just ridiculously behind on my posting. will get to it soon as i feel like it!
you've missed a lot of nothing but we'll update it soon and bore you to sleep! :)

week 13 of homeschooling

mon, nov 9:
· math and spelling tests
· grammar & math worksheets
· reading books
· gym class with daddy
· from the prairie primer: reading, language, writing, science, living, health, bible

tues, nov 10:
· math timed tests
· grammar & math worksheets
· reading books
· the children of God band practiced loudly for music class
· from the prairie primer: reading, living, character, weather

wed, nov 11:
· math timed tests
· spelling words in alphabetical order
· grammar & math worksheets
· reading books
· gym class involved trampoline jumping and ball catching with only a few minor injuries. :)
· from the prairie primer: reading, bible, writing, science - and we finished plum creek!
· for our primer work we took a field trip to garbry big woods to do our lessons. it was so cold that we did them in the van! we did take a brisk walk and they ended up playing in the prairie grass just like the ingalls girls. we were quiet and listened to the grass singing. and we found an old pump water fountain. ended up being a pretty good lesson. :)

thurs, nov 12:
· spelling word searches. a website creates custom word searches and crosswords. how cool is that? perfect for spelling words!
· math timed tests
· grammar & math worksheets
· reading books
· the children of God band practiced loudly for music class
· no prairie primer today, didn't feel like it!

fri, nov 13:
· no school friday! well, not sure what allen has planned, but i have nothing. just lots of cookies to bake and kids (and parents) who are excited about their lock-in! i just made crinkle cookies for the first time and wow are they yummy! definitely many future cooking classes about those!

little lundys on the prairie

today we walked to school just like laura ingalls. it's 2.5 miles to the public school, the same distance laura walked to hers from the little house on plum creek. so we walked there, and back, and shew! we all decided she was pretty tough! we couldn't imagine doing that after morning chores, then having a full day of school, then doing it again, then having more chores, and homework, yikes!
it's also very convenient that on the corner by the school, there's an old one-room schoolhouse that we got to explore! it made our walk to school a little more authentic and educational. (wish i'd taken my camera, i just had my phone for pics!)
so cool to walk along the prairie (corn and soy fields) and teach the kids while we saw some homeschooling neighbors, combines up close, dead birds (they thought so anyway), a creek, etc. it was a fun trip!

week 12 of homeschooling

this one flew by and we almost missed it!

mon, nov 2:
today was officially declared grandparents day and school canceled as the grands took the kids to lunch, dinner, and shopping in between!

tues, nov 3:
· today was election day so we did our last research then took the kids to vote. they were so excited and we thought happy to learn about the electoral process, though we learned they thought they got to vote. oops! so their first lesson was you have to be 18, not a popular rule with our kids. we also talked about treating people respectfully even if you disagree with them. with the issues and candidates on our ballot, it was easy to find examples. (i said that respectfully!)
· then we took a hike at a new reserve (that we'll be paying for over 10 more years thanks to that levy passing... also said very respectfully).
· we watched an episode of little house and talked about the lessons (so easy & fun!).
· i think allen did some work with them. i can't remember past the sugar fog. we had a lot of candy.

wed, nov 4:
· today the grands left, which is always a very sad occasion. but we took some family pics, hated but needed of course (in my opinion!) and enjoyed our time with grandma and grandpa before they left.
· we watched an episode of little house and talked about the lessons.
· from the prairie primer: reading, math (grasshopper math!), nutrition, bible, language, science
· we may have done something else. i need to keep up to date or (as josh once said when he was little), my remembers fall out of my brain.
· awana night at church, western night!

thurs, nov 5:
· allen did something, i'm sure. i'll have to ask. (did, he won't tell me now!)
· we watched an episode of little house and talked about the lessons.
· we've been needing to cut down a (falling) tree in the front yard and what better way to learn about hard work and chopping wood? so that took up a good portion of the day, sawing, chopping, and cleaning up. and of course our weird kids LOVED it! they cut all the pieces into firewood even, just like pa (which is what they're now calling allen).
· from the prairie primer: reading, bible, safety, cause & effect, writing
· no jack the dog wasn't really in the lesson, i just thought he was cute. :)

fri, nov 6:
· allen did something, yeah, will ask. (still won't tell!)
· we watched an episode of little house and talked about the lessons.
· from the prairie primer: reading, grammar, writing, bible, science, living, (we skipped eating turnips!)
· we decided to walk to school, just like laura did in the book. it was great! see the next post for details.

how the lundys jump in leaves

we thought the kids would enjoy jumping in the leaves and left them to play. this is what they came up with. is that normal?! :)

a grand week with the grands!

we had such a fun week while the grands were here! waving, hi grandma and grandpa! (my mom will totally wave at her computer screen.)
october 31st is our big day: halloween, allen's birthday, and all three adoption days (8 yrs for josh, 3 for matt & lizzie). so we celebrated for days! candy, cookies, cake, cupcakes, pie, pumpkin bread (new to me, and yummy!), and oreo truffles (allen's request instead of cake, though we ended up with cake too!) we made dead fingers, which looked great before they baked. they turned into monster's mashed fingers after. :/
we canceled school on monday and declared it grandparents day! the kids went to lunch, dinner, and shopping with them and allen and i had a free day! fun day for everyone, except poor grandpa who hurt his back. :( but he got a few days rest and we had more time to visit, so a bonus for us (if a bit painful for him).
random pics below. lizzy went curly for the big day. a pic of the kids and grands looking at a scrapbook. josh falling asleep with the dog. matt watching tv with/on grandma and grandpa. the dreaded family photo, had to be bribed with a silly pic, but we got a few of us all together.
they've headed back to florida now and will be missed around here, but we were glad to have such a fun visit! see you at christmas! (i bet she waved again.) :)

margiella is not bakerella

i'm no bakerella, but at least it usually tastes good! i tried bakerella's spider web design on cupcakes. super easy and cute, but i guess i missed a memo and used quick drying icing instead of well, not. so mine didn't exactly web, they pretty much crumbled, but they were good.
we'll just pretend a bug got into each web and the spider violently wrapped it up, or something like that. it's halloween, scary and gross is good. the boys said who cares what it looks like, as long as it tastes good (gotta love that!) :)
i'm pretty sure you can tell which are which! :)

Another commercial break, new Birthdays CD released!

Have you seen the new DSP Birthdays CD for beautiful and easy digital scrapbooking pages? It's so fun! And perfect for birthdays, parties, AND so much more. The kits are very versatile and would be great for every day pages too.
As always, you can order the downloadable version and get it instantly, or have the physical CD shipped to your door!