Thanksgiving Lapbook

Our week consisted of finishing our Thanksgiving Lapbook and hanging out with daddy.

The lapbook was 3 folders, which we did over a couple of weeks. It's all we've been doing for school because we were getting ready for my hubby's homecoming and then enjoying having him back. It came out great.

The cover...

The Whole Thing...

Folder 1...

Folder 2...

Folder 3...

I'm a winner!!!

Yay, I've won the drawing over at Everything Except the Grill.

I'd like to thank God for giving me the ability to point my camera, Zoe for being mean to her sister, Clara for reacting to Zoe's meanness so perfectly, Christina for birthing those two lovely girls and allowing me to photograph their finer moments, my husband for buying me the pricey camera and, of course, the academy. =o)

This blog sure is lucky for me. This is the third thing I've won since I've started it. Woot!!

Chasing Picture Perfection Assignment

It's time for another photo challenge over at Chasing Picture Perfection.


Our assignment this time is to take a stop action photo. I was excited about this assignment because I've been working on that skill all summer long. Between my daughter's soccer games and my friend's field hockey I'm slowly, but surely, getting better at this.


I like shooting action shots, particularly kids sports, because when you look back at the pictures you can see all the funny expressions the players make. That's hours of good, cheap entertainment. After my daughter's first soccer game we spent over an hour going through the 600+ pictures I took and made up a story based on the kids facial expressions. We laughed until our sides hurt.


Here are my two favorite shots of the summer. The second shot is a bonus because my daughter really wanted me to use a shot of her this time. Apparently she keeps track of this stuff. LOL So you get a 2-4-1 this time.



Those are some hard-working girls on that field hockey field.




I like this soccer picture because the kids remind me of a dog chasing it's tail. They just keep running after that ball. LOL My daughter's the one with the ribbons in her hair. She likes to be sporty and girly.

Weeky Wrap-Up/ Tot School: Daddy edition

Kayleigh is currently 21 months

This week we experienced life school at it's best...Daddy's home!!!!!!


I would like to say that we got these great pictures of his homecoming but we didn't cuz of his command's inability to communicate properly. But the important thing is that daddy's home.



I did take some pictures at IHOP where daddy ate his first sand-free meal. Here are my favorites.

Some nice gentlemen noticed that Kevin had just stepped off a plane from somewhere sandy (you don't wear desert cami's here this time of year) and paid for our meals. How nice is that?

Be sure to check out what other's are doing over at Carisa's and Kris'.

My Life. In Pictures. Session 3/Day 4

Today's assignment involves the sense of taste. I had a great idea involving my mom's new teeth and an orange but she wouldn't cooperate. She said I could have them when she kicked the bucket. LOL I said thanks but no thanks cuz I needed them for Thursday.

So I choose a picture of my husband enjoying his first taste of 'Sand-Free" food for the first time in a very long time.

Probably a picture of him eating the giant steak he plans to have later would have made for a more interesting shot. But I don't have time for that today cuz, Hooray, my honey's finally home!

My Life. In Pictures. Session 3/Day 3

The five senses challenge continues. Today Amber has challenged us to photograph something that represents the sense of "touch".

I chose a cuddly baby for my subject. Who wouldn't want to stroke those silky curls or cuddly that warm little body in her fuzzy jammies?

My Life. In Pictures. Session 3/Day 2

It's time for another photo challenge over at Everything Except the Grill. This weeks theme is The Five Senses. Today we are to focus on sound. I was very excited about this one because I already took the perfect picture this summer.

It's a sound that anyone with children is familiar with.

I trust that this one needs no explanation. LOL Everytime I look at this picture I can hear the screaming all over again. Like going back in time.

My Life. In Pictures. Session 3/Day 1

It's time for another photo challenge over at Everything Except the Grill. This weeks theme is The Five Senses. Today we are to focus on sight.

I chose a "sight" you don't often see.

Ducks swimming down the road you live on. Right past your front door.

Yep, that was pretty much our week last week. LOL Sadly, for my toddler, the water has gone down today and the ducks no longer allow her to be entertained at our window. LOL

Kayleigh is currently 21 months

Well I'm attempting to do a Tot School post this week. Tot School has been replaced mainly with Life School, mostly due to a certain tot's less-than-desirable behavior. Dealing with temper tantrums is mainly what we've been dealing with around here, with a little homeschooling fit in around them for Big Sis. So this post will cover the few things that we've done over the last two weeks.



I brought out our "Fall" spooning activity again, sans spoons. She wasn't ready for the spoons last time so I just letter her work with her fingers. All I was hoping for was that she would put one gem in each spot. I'm still hoping. She did not want them there. LOL

We also tried a new activity with magnets. I found these really neat magnet sheets. Basically they are just pictures with "holes" in them. You put a round magnet in the "holes". They suggested buying the magnets on Amazon but I found them at the Dollar Tree for cheap, cheap, cheap. There are sheets for just about any theme you can think of so I printed out some with a Thanksgiving theme.

She really liked this activity. She even attempted to put the magnets in the "right" spots for a while. Score!!! She did this activity for several days. Eventually it would up being another thing for her to throw (that's one our main issues right now) so I put it away for another time.

She likes sitting at the table with Mackenzie's Bible. That never lasts long as she is very rough with it and we have to take it away. Naturally she has zero interest in her many Bibles.

Here she is "working" in her big girl notebook. She likes to "sit wok" a lot.

Reading with sissy is something Mackenzie would LOVE to do more of but Kayleigh rarely allows it.

She does like it when Mackenzie sings her favorite song with her.

2 Little Monkeys swining from the tree


Teasing Mr. Alligator...

Along comes Mr. Alligator quiet as can be...

And he snaps that monkey right out of that three!!!! (Insert lots of laughter here)

But for the most part she's been doing this...

Which is apparently exhausting...


Be sure to check out what the other tots are up to over at Carisa's.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Flood Edition

Well's it the end of the week and time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris.

There's not much to say about our week. We were having an easy week in preparation for DADDY COMING HOME. =o) Meaning I pawn off my kids on other people so that I can do some cleaning in peace. Kenzie's work for the week was a math test and starting a Thanksgiving Lapbook.

The lapbook is going well. No pictures yet because it's not finished. However my tasks were put on hold due to the lovely Nor'Easter that blew through. Thus preventing me from ditching my kids with anyone. I could explain the problem but I'll let the pictures do the talking.

This was no surprise. There's been problems with the drains in our neighborhood since we moved in. A little rain and the streets flood, a big storm and the ducks are thrilled. The problem is easily fixed if they come out and pump them, but they rarely do. Regardless of how many phone calls they get. So needless to say, 2 days later, the "moat" around my "palace" remains. Thus I'm pretty certain my slab will get soaked and the water will seep through the floor and I'll be replacing the entire thing again. Sigh...

Weekly Wrap-Up: No field trip edtion

It's that time folks. Time to wrap up our week. And look, I'm writting the post on a Friday. Although I don't know that it will be posted on Friday. LOL Be sure to hop on over to Kris' to see what other folks have been up to this week.

This week was nice. Mainly because we didn't have a lot of "extras". No field trips breaking up our week and lots of time at home. Our only "big venture" was cooking class starting back up this month. Mackenzie takes a cooking class every so often at The Young Chefs Academy. We primarily do this in the winter as a fun activity for the kids to do when it's too cold outside.

For me the class serves 2 purposes:

1) She learns how to cook. I can cook. Not terribly well and I certainly don't enjoy it but, thanks to Quick Cooking magazine, I can get edible food on the table. It's a necessary evil for me. LOL So we don't do a lot of cooking together at home. The extra mess alone is enough to send me right over the edge. Cooking together is not as frequent as it probably should be. I'll work on it. =o)

2) The mom's hang out at the local Starbucks while the kids are cooking for an hour and a half. Okay, so this might be my favorite reason. LOL If they'd only let me enroll Wee Babe it would be perfect.

Now I need to remember the rest of the week. What did we do? LOL Thinking, thinking...

Bible:

We stick-figured our way through the temptation of Jesus. We talked a lot about areas where we both needed to work on not succumbing to temptation. That's a long list. Yikes!

Math:

I think we were skip counting by 3's. Which means next week she'll be multiplying by 3's.

Science:

We are studying birds at the moment. If I were a good mom, I'd take her bird watching. I don't enjoy birds much though. Well except for chickens and turkeys. The others don't taste as good and they poop on my car and make too much noise. LOL One of my favorite things about living in Guam was how clean my car stayed. =o) I should send her with my bird-loving friend. She likes them and can pretty much tell you what any bird is off the top of her head.

Language Arts:

We did a few days on proper oral language, particularly focusing on verb tense. Mackenzie's favorite part was the fact that there was no writing involved.

Social Studies:

We're still studying colonial times. Love, love, love it.

Our read aloud is The Witch of Blackbird Pond. And we're getting to the really good parts. Yay!! If only my sinuses weren't draining so I could read longer.

Mackenzie read The Skippack School this week. She says it was really good. She can't tell me why though. LOL

She also got a good lesson this week on why it's not a good idea to rely on one source for your information. We were studying how the colony of Georgia was founded.

One book painted James Oglethorpe and the colonization of Georgia as this great humanitarian deed. And it was, in a sense. The London poor were given opportunities for jobs, homes, food, etc. That's definately a step up from living on the streets.

What that particular didn't book didn't tell you was how Oglethorpe et. all were really looking out for their own interests. They thought London had far too many poor and wanted them out. What better place for them than across the ocean? And while they're there, they'll work where they were told, eat what they were told, dress how they were told, and basically have no options. And the "best part" was that if Spainish in Florida decided to attack the English colonies, they'd wipe out Georgia first. It's just London's down-trodden, so no big loss, right?

That was a good lessson in "there are two sides" to every story. And as to why our curriculum uses more than one source.

Our history pocket this week was about colonial homes. She got to make a "diorama" HP style of a colonial home, which she thought was fun. I like crafts about as much as I like cooking, so it was a big treat. ROFL

Mackenzie was thrilled when what she learned about colonial homes in the HP showed up in her reading. "I know what a settle is mom. I read about them in my HP." All the pieces are starting to fit together. =o)

Tot School

Kayleigh is currently 20 months

Tot School this week was made up entirely of life school. I did not plan a single Tot School activity this week. We had 2 field trips this week, plus Halloween so I called that "good."




Our first trip of the week was to Brookdale Farm. Kayleigh had fun on a hayride, looking at animals, and running through a field of orange "balls." I mean pumpkins. Or as Kayleigh calls them, "punkees".



Kayleigh saw a bug on the greenhouse floor and wasn't happy with it. LOL

Sitting with sissy like a big girl.

Hayride

Later that week, we went to The Virginia Living Museum. Sissy was studying wolves and making a lapbook. Kayleigh tagged along and had a couple of wolfie things to do of her own.

She was very interested in coloring her wolf "book". I'm sure it had a lot to do with the fact that Mackenzie and her friends were working on their own lapbooks but I found it encouraging. One day we might be able to make a Tot Book. We just need to convince Kayleigh to at least try activities mommy's way. Yeah, right! LOL







We also took another peek at the megalodon exhibit. Oddly enough Kayleigh doesn't find sharks "ska-ee". Just dead corn. LOL

Her favorite thing to so was play "find the turtle" in the pond tank. He's a quick little turtle.

Be sure to check out what the other tots are doing at Carissa's and Susan's.