We are still here....just busy!

 I never seem to get around to blogging. A whole week seems to go by and I have nothing posted.  The weeks just seem to fly by so quickly, and before I know it Saturday is back again.

So what have been been so busy doing.

Science - We did a science experiment. I am doing better about getting to science the last few weeks. And we have even been doing the activities.

 Here we are testing to see if life can exist on Mercury, Venus,  and Earth. My kids could have told you right away that the hot water used in the Venus bottle was too hot for the yeast. They have helped me make bread enough to know water that hot kills the yeast.  We left the balloons on the bottles for the rest of the day and the Earth Balloon kept getting bigger while the other two just sat there limp and empty! My kids love experiments.

History - We listened to two chapters of Story of the World this week about China, Japan and Korea. We also listened to A Single Shard. This was a GREAT book!  All my kids loved it and Sophie loved how much they talked about pottery. She has been throwing pots the last few weeks in her pottery class and understands how difficult it is to make beautiful pots. She doesn't even have to go out and dig up her own clay.

Language arts - Sophie and Ian are making progress with their IEW Fix-it. They quickly edit their sentence or paragraph and I am finding that they can catch almost all the errors unless the program throws something new at them. Which means they are learning. I haven't been good about their writing program. It tends to slip when things get busy.
Henry fights doing his writing but gets it done quite quickly once he actually sits down to do it. He just can't get pulled away from the fun. He also seems to think he does one thing and then needs to go outside to skate. So after each subject he takes a quick jaunt around the driveway.

 I never know what to do with Molly during school time. When I get out something for her to do it distracts the boys from doing any of their work as they quickly want to "help" her do hers. I have let her play Starfall on the tablet this week. She loves it but as usual Henry can't let a screen be on without him being right there to see the action. So I am still working on finding something for Molly to do that isn't disruptive.









Math - Everyone is doing well with math. Ian quickly grabs his book and finishes his exercise without much explanation from me. He is enjoying his online class and getting very quick at the times tables.

 Sophie has been doing her Teaching Textbooks now for a few weeks and seems to be doing alright with it. It is still pretty easy math but she finds she makes simple mistakes too often and then scores lower than she would like. I have to remind her not to try to do the math in her head but to get paper and pencil out so she can check her answers before entering them.

 Henry, when he is not distracted, gets through his math each day quite easily.

 

We broke out the multiplication angels game for Henry to practice his times tables. He matched up the angels to their wing pretty well. 

Reading and reading and reading.
Ian and Henry are fighting over the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book. I have told them they can't play the Wii game for the 5th- 7th books until they read the book so they are motivated.

 Sophie has been revisiting one her favorite series. Fablehaven books always seem to be floating around this house. She flits from one to the next in no particular order.

 This doesn't seem like enough to keep us busy all day, every day. Once you through in scripture, piano lessons, daily piano practice for three kids, choir, gymnastics, pottery, ballet, a library visit, cub scouts, activity girls, co-op, park day and all the other things that get thrown into our days you end up with one very packed full week where we don't have much left over time for anything else.