First, three new visitors arrived at our house this week. Aunt Fluffy has been staying with us since the end of May, but this week my parents arrived with my cousin, College Girl. It was a nice suprise, especially for the Tree Dwellers since they adore College Girl. I think it's because she likes cats (and mommy doesn't!).
My dad brought back my computer desk which he had taken home with him in May to refinish for me. He did an awesome job!
Furniture restoration has kind of beocme a new hobby for my dad. Who knew when I bought this desk at a school closing that it would one day look so good!?!?
Papaw also finished hanging up a tire swing for the Tree Dwellers:
When you are Tree Dwellers you MUST have a good, old-fashioned tire swing hanging from your tree!
Second, eventhough this was a holiday week, we still managed to get in quite a bit of school. Here is Magpie building the walls of Jericho out of peanut butter and crackers:
And adding a pink (didn't have red) cord to be Rahab's signal to the Israelites that her family shouldn't be destroyed.
Magpie liked this activity very much. Especially the clean up!
Magpie also finished making her number book.
This was her favorite page, the number four. Our preschool curriculum, Heart of Dakota, slowly has the student add a new page to their number book that corresponds with the Bible story for that week.
We also continued learning Spanish with the free Salsa Spanish videos. Here is a picture of the worksheets I'm making to go with each lesson.
Chipette's is on the left and Magpie's is on the right. The main difference is that Chipette has to do actual writing of the Spanish vocabulary, but Magpie gets to match it.
Third, we still took time out of our school week to celebrate the Fourth of July on Wednesday. Since we live in the city limits, we just bought sparklers for the kids this year.
Monkey is still very afraid of sparklers and fireworks. The whole time he kept looking at them and saying, "Hot. Hot."
The biggest excitement of our week was that Magpie turned five on Friday! She is growing up way too quickly for my taste. On Friday night we took Magpie out to eat for her birthday (she wanted a cheeseburger) and then to a huge indoor play area for her, Chipette, and Monkey to spend an hour and a half running around and having a wonderful time!
Of course Friday was just the warm-up because Saturday was Magpie's birthday party with her friends! With having three kids, we can't afford to have big birthday parties for all of our children every year, so a few years ago we started a rotation. One child gets a big party that year while the siblings can have a few friends over for a sleepover, movie night, etc., but no BIG party.
Last year was Monkey's year, since he was turning 1 and this year it was Magpie's turn to celebrate turning 5 with her friends. She decided that she wanted a rock-n-roll party, and I must say that it was quite a fun theme!
We had a "red carpet" that everyone walked into the room on and I took their picture as they were arriving, just like real rock stars!
Magpie with her best "rocker" face.
Chipette rocking it out hard!
Monkey cheesing for the camera with his lightning bolt face paint.
For games, we played Rock Bingo. I made up bingo cards using rock band logos (Guns and Roses, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, etc.). We also played Rock and Roll Musical Chairs which apparently brings children to tears nowdays (not the rock and roll, the musical chairs)! Who knew?
For our crafts, I had the kids pretend like they were famous rock stars and were putting their handprints on the sidewalk in Hollywood.
The kids also made some rock star cuff bracelets using a kit I found at Wal-Mart.
Of course, the two best parts of any birthday party are the cake...
Special thanks to my friend, D, who made this cake for me for a deep discount. It was as delicious as it looks!
And the presents....
All of the girls were picking out which Littlest Pet Shop they liked the best!
Magpie declared it the "best day of her life!" And it really was a lot of fun.
One of those weeks that makes me so thankful for a wonderful family, being able to homeschool, and fabulous friends for my children.
My cup is running over in the treehouse,
Chelli
Sounds like a great (and busy!) week at your house! :)
ReplyDelete(oh, and 'twas fun to see you on COCHS yahoo group--I don't remember if that's how I came across your blog or not)
It was super busy! I didn't realize how busy until Saturday afternoon when we all crashed!
DeleteI am involved in two COC groups on Facebook and the yahoo group. Plus a couple of homeschool forums on the web. I need all of the homeschool support and encouragement I can get!!!
Happy birthday! Looks like she had a fun day! Thanks for the Salsa link! I added it to my Helpful Edu-sites on my blog for later on. We're doing ASL next year, but I think it's important for the kids to learn some Spanish. The videos are cute!
ReplyDeleteMy children love the Salsa videos! It is the one school subject nobody complains about. I've been pleasantly surprised how much vocabulary they've picked up. There are free lessons plans for the videos from the Wyoming Department of Education. I have the link for those under the Curriculum tab if you are interested.
DeleteOoh, the tire swing! I think my kids NEED one of those! :-)
ReplyDeleteThey have had more fun with it than any kids have the right to have!!! They definitely NEED one! :)
Delete