Catching Up

We have been so busy this week that I haven't had any time to blog so I am going to try to catch everybody up tonight.  

Since Earth Day was this week we spent some time trying to focus on a biblical view of stewardship of the earth.  I took the section on ecology out of our Contenders for the Faith book and retyped it out into worksheet form so that it was easier for ds12 to read and learn from.  We have only recently bought the Contenders book but I already see such enormous potential in it.  We read a couple of other books on recycling also.  The one book that really impressed me was Young Discoverers Garbage and Recycling by Sally Morgan and Rosie Farlow.  It was factual, interesting to read, wonderfully illustrated, and has a ton of  activities to try at home.  This week we also used the recycling center activity that I had posted about earlier and I am happy to say my son had a very good time "sorting the garbage".  We were able to make two projects this week out of recycled materials.  The first was this pinwheel.

My son enjoys holding this in front of the fan in his room and making it spin fast. 

The second project we did was a recycled can robot and I thought he turned out very cute.

He was a lot more work than I had intended but we made it through and I am super proud of my son on this one because it required a lot of fine motor skill to screw in all the little screws.  I know that was very tasking for him but he still gave it his all. 

The other neat thing we did for Earth Day was a game I printed out from somewhere and I really wish I could share where but I don't remember.  It was fun though even though I lost every time!   Here is a picture of it.

We continue to work on our Middle Ages lapbook.  We are reading about castles and studying all the functions of the different parts of a castle and all the work that went into building them.  I have to be honest and say I am finding it a lot more intersting than Joan of Arc last week. 

Ds11 has been doing well with working at the table with me this week.  We have been using a lot of sensory activities as I am trying to keep him with me and he gravitates towards anything sensory.  We worked with sorting colored bears dug out of our rice box.  He hasn't used a rice box in quite a while and it was interesting to note just how fast his tactile defensiveness returns.  He would only use the tips of his fingers at first but after a while he was a lot more comfortable with it.   Here is a picture of him trying to figure it out.

He and I also worked with playdough for quite some time and he seemed to enjoy that a lot also.  I am going to try to make some chocolate playdough tomorrow because both of them seem to enjoy homemade dough especially if it has a good scent.  Ds12 also did some fine motor work with Playdough this week.  I found out that there are these great little projects you can make with just regular cans of playdough on their website.  Here is the link:  http://www.hasbro.com/playdoh/en_US/FreshIdeas.cfm

If you click on the projects they give you step by step instructions with pictures so I printed the pictures and instructions for the penguin out and made them into individual cards and laminated them.  I put the cards and the needed playdough in a workbox and he had a great time.  He gets very overwhelmed if he just sees the finished product and is expected to replicate it but he did a great job when it was broken down into steps.  I think we will be trying a bunch of these.  Here is his penguin.

The weather here has been beautiful pretty much all week so we have spent a bunch of time outside.  Spring in North Carolina is wonderful.  The tempertures are in the upper 70s to mid 80s and the humidity is a lot lower than in the summer.  We spent a bunch of time on the trampoline and have been able to go for family walks almost every night this week.  I LOVE to go for walks!   Here are some pictures of my favorite people (and puppy) outside this week.

On thursday we watched the Dove Awards together.  This was exciting for us as we are really into christian music and we just got SkyAngel this week so we were able to watch it for the first time.  I was really touched by Steven Curtis Chapman singing Cinderella. After all  their family has been through this year it has been so touching to see him, Marybeth, and their two sons.  They are such an amazing family with such a strong faith. 

One of the best things to happen this week was that we finally purchased a chest freezer.  I have been wanting one for a while as the refridgerator we have has a tiny freezer and we are constantly struggling to fit everything in it and also I feel we can save some money by being able to buy a bunch of meat when it is on sale.  I have been watching for a used one but everytime I see one it is already sold.  The other day I received an email from Sears saying they were having a sale and we decided to go with a new one.  My husband went and picked it up on Thursday.  He also went out on Friday and bought a bunch of ice cream bars and called it his treasure chest.  Sometimes he is too cute.  I enjoyed being able to go grocery shopping this week without having to think about what would fit in the freezer.  I think we are going to find it very useful.

Tomorrow it supposed to be in the mid 80s so we are going to put out the swimming pool for our boys.  We are probably going to have to figure out how to keep puppy girl out as she doesn't like to miss out on the fun.  I also would like to get some baking done esp. now that I can freeze some cookies too.  I also have to work on some school stuff.  We are going to be doing the tree section out of Contenders for the Faith because Friday was Arbor Day and I thought it would be fitting.  I have already typed out the lesson but I have some other activities planned out that I will need to prepare.  I am having a much easier time making things for school now that I am getting the hang of Word2007.  

Well, I am going to get going to bed now.  I think there was more I wanted to type but I am tired and so I will save the rest for tommorrow. 

Have a blessed day!