Tonight we had Racer's Pinewood derby. He did a really great job cutting out his car almost by himself. He also did all his painting and wheels himself. DH smoothed out the nails for him so he could get it to go faster. He did better than last year. I think he was a little disappointed that he didn't advance to a second heat, but he got second in all the official races he competed in. I will add pictures when I find the camera. I'm not sure where it ended up.
I'll also need to add pictures of our two new trees and two new honeyberry bushes from Stark Brothers. We bought a Sweetheart Apricot, which has edible kernels, and a pear tree with red and yellow varieties grafted on. The honeyberry bushes are promising to be a blueberry substitute since our soil is unsuitable for blueberries. I'm really hoping they take off and are the right taste for DH and the kids. I really hope everyone one likes them because we will be getting two more honeyberries of a different variety as soon as they are ready to ship. So we will have four different varieties of honeyberries and DH was eyeing another 2-n-1 apple tree. I told him we really didn't have any more room for another tree.
We had a co-op planning meeting today so nearly all our memorization practice happened in the car. On the way to the meeting we sang our three history songs - Marilyn's song, the President song, and Fifty Nifty United States. Then we also sang the two religion songs we are working on - the Apostles song and "Latter-day Prophets". Racer took us through the timeline events we are memorizing. I was surprised by how many I actually didn't know without the cards. I will plead that I was driving on the freeway while we were doing this. We also reviewed all our states and capitals. He was going a little fast for Chicklette.
We got a lot done at our co-op meeting and I'm excited for our geography fair coming up in May. I need to start scheduling in time to work on it so we end up with a good product. We also decided on doing life science through R.E.A.L. Life science and we are debating stretching it over two years. We'll also do art for our second subject. It should be a great year and I'm sad that Racer and Chicklette won't get to participate in it. If we go back with them though, I know we'll be welcomed with open arms.
Religion - Um, it didn't happen? I am having a hard time getting it done because I want to do it with all the kids together, but sometimes it's hard to get them all on one subject at a time. I really have to search out the time and opportunity to do it. We did do our songs, just not our scripture memorization and not the activity I had planned.
Spelling - Chicklette only missed two words. "Skin" is really giving her problems for some reason. Racer got an A+.
We got a lot done at our co-op meeting and I'm excited for our geography fair coming up in May. I need to start scheduling in time to work on it so we end up with a good product. We also decided on doing life science through R.E.A.L. Life science and we are debating stretching it over two years. We'll also do art for our second subject. It should be a great year and I'm sad that Racer and Chicklette won't get to participate in it. If we go back with them though, I know we'll be welcomed with open arms.
Religion - Um, it didn't happen? I am having a hard time getting it done because I want to do it with all the kids together, but sometimes it's hard to get them all on one subject at a time. I really have to search out the time and opportunity to do it. We did do our songs, just not our scripture memorization and not the activity I had planned.
Spelling - Chicklette only missed two words. "Skin" is really giving her problems for some reason. Racer got an A+.
Grammar - Racer reviewed adverbs today and practiced diagramming sentences with drawing his own diagrams. He's getting better, although he'll still give me "Where did that come from?" type answers when I ask him the function of a word in a sentence. I think he just isn't thinking through it, but I don't know. Chicklette's grammar focused on titles of respect and their abbreviations, so Mister = Mr., Mrs. = Mistress, and Ms. = None of your business.
Math - Chicklette and Racer just had Xtramath today since they finished all their math for the week. Turtle plugged along on Funnix Math. He had his first two page worksheet today and was pretty surprised by that.
Physics - We had a quiz today which they got all the answers right. This was our last week on spin.
Road Trip USA - We started on Wyoming today. While it would be fun to have buffalo meat chili, I don't even know a place that sells it here, so I think we'll skip that regional food. Racer asked today how many states we would cross to get to Minnesota. I told him it would depend on how you drove, but I need to remember to look at a map with him tomorrow.
Daily 6-trait Writing - As promised Racer had to write a paragraph today. He lost his Venn diagram from yesterday somewhere in the house so he quickly made up another one today. His paragraph didn't end up too badly. I helped him edit the organization a little bit and then we corrected the spelling by looking up the words in the dictionary. Then he rewrote the paragraph with our corrections and it actually ended up a decent paragraph. He told me he never wanted to do that again and I hugged him and thanked him for continuing to work on it even though he didn't want to. I also told him he will be writing a lot of paragraphs for a long time, so he better figure out how to do it even when he doesn't want to . . . which led to me singing , "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down . . ." That ended well!
Stay tuned for the pictures. Hopefully I'll get them up tomorrow, but I have to also go through the kids' drawers because it seems like all their clothes have holes and Turtle only has one pair of pants and a bunch of too-casual shorts. So we're off to sort, try on, throw out, and list needs.
Math - Chicklette and Racer just had Xtramath today since they finished all their math for the week. Turtle plugged along on Funnix Math. He had his first two page worksheet today and was pretty surprised by that.
Physics - We had a quiz today which they got all the answers right. This was our last week on spin.
Road Trip USA - We started on Wyoming today. While it would be fun to have buffalo meat chili, I don't even know a place that sells it here, so I think we'll skip that regional food. Racer asked today how many states we would cross to get to Minnesota. I told him it would depend on how you drove, but I need to remember to look at a map with him tomorrow.
Daily 6-trait Writing - As promised Racer had to write a paragraph today. He lost his Venn diagram from yesterday somewhere in the house so he quickly made up another one today. His paragraph didn't end up too badly. I helped him edit the organization a little bit and then we corrected the spelling by looking up the words in the dictionary. Then he rewrote the paragraph with our corrections and it actually ended up a decent paragraph. He told me he never wanted to do that again and I hugged him and thanked him for continuing to work on it even though he didn't want to. I also told him he will be writing a lot of paragraphs for a long time, so he better figure out how to do it even when he doesn't want to . . . which led to me singing , "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down . . ." That ended well!
Stay tuned for the pictures. Hopefully I'll get them up tomorrow, but I have to also go through the kids' drawers because it seems like all their clothes have holes and Turtle only has one pair of pants and a bunch of too-casual shorts. So we're off to sort, try on, throw out, and list needs.