No more CUBS

 Cub Scouts has been a part of our lives for years now. Ian and Henry sure have had a great time going to den meetings, pack meetings and all sorts of cub scout activities over the past few years. This past week Henry attended his final Pack Meeting.

 The scout master put the boys to work building towers with toothpicks and marshmellows. Ian and another older scout helped out the wolves since only one wolf was at this meeting.

Here are the three Webelos showing how how well they could work together.

As part of the Pack Meeting Henry was awarded the Arrow of Light which is the last award any cub scout  earns.  It is usually played up as a big deal and a whole ceremony takes place complete with face paint.

As his Webelos den leader (I had just come from Soccer practice so forgot my uniform. I usually just borrow Ian's shirt when I need to be official), I was given the honor of painting the colors on his face.

 Then he gets to "bridge" into Boy Scouts.  There is an actual bridge used that has each of the virtues of the scout law written on the planks. The boy bridging walks across and recites The Scout Law as he moves across the bridge.

 Our  Cubmaster made these great Arrow of Light plaques with an arrow for each of the boys.

 We had two boys bridge and receive their Arrows of Light at this pack meeting. That leaves me with only one Webelos boy in my den.  For now I will continue to be the den leader and hopefully Henry will still come along for the fun of it. So perhaps this wont be our last pack meeting. It is, for sure, his last one wearing the blue Cub Scout shirt. He is excited to finally get to be a boy scout.

A few days later the Boy Scouts held a Court of Honor to hand out awards. Ian had worked hard all summer. He had attended camp and Merit badge midways and we worked on things at home and he was able to get 11 more merit badges and qualified for a new rank. He is now a Star Scout. Not too bad for a boy not even 13 yet.  

We forgot the camera for the Court of Honor but here is his haul for the night. 

Sports Mania

Saturdays, for us, in the Fall look like this!

 I am coaching Henry's Soccer Team again.  I have a really great bunch of kids.

  Henry is playing goalie this year.

 But I don't like to have anyone play goalie through the whole game. So I have 4 kids play goalie each game and each plays for half of a half with means each plays about 15 min as goalie and then the rest of the game they get to play some other position.

 Henry was thrilled to score his first goal in this game. Our team this year is undefeated and often scores 6 points before the other team even scores once.  We have a "Mercy rule" which means we don't go above a 6 point spread. This means our team ends up playing keep away through most of the 2nd half. This gives kids the opportunity to play positions they wouldn't usually play. I had my forwards back playing defense and my defense up playing forward.  It gave Henry the opportunity to get up to the goal and score today. He is usually a defender and likes it there but was thrilled to kick a goal today!

Molly's game is next and at her age they don't keep score and don't even have a goalie but each team played well and made many goals.

Her games are at 1:00 which makes them during the hot part of the day.  I bring a spray bottle and mist the girls often.

Then later in the afternoon we head to the football field to watch Ian play flag football.

 This sport is much more Ian's speed. This is his first year playing but already says he likes it way better than Basketball.

 Here is Ian on defense grabbing a flag to end a play

 Here is he going for another one. I think this one gets past him.

 Here is Ian on offense. He received the ball and was able to get the 2 point conversion.

All my kids teams won their games today. So there was a lot of happy but hot red faces on the walk/drive home from each game.

The air conditioning sure felt nice when we walked into the house after all that sunshine and heat.

What is keeping us busy and School plans for the year.

Well.... I am coaching soccer yet again. This means I have two practices to run each week. But the U12 age is pretty great to coach. They are a fun group of kids! Henry doesn't seem to mind that I am his coach again either.  Molly is also playing soccer but I am not her coach. I still have to get her to two practices each week. Too bad her practice wasn't at the same time as Henry's. Ian too has practices every week but he is playing Flag Football instead. His practices are at the same time as Molly's but at different places so I go back and forth dropping off and picking up kids on those days.  Then every Saturday from Sept. through the end of Oct. We will have two soccer games and a Flag Football game to attend.

This, of course, is on top of school. Homeschool keeps me busy even though the older three do a lot of it online.

Sophie is a Sophomore this year and attending Williamsburg Academy for most of her classes. She is doing American Lit, US History and Biology through them. She is taking a BYU independent Study Spanish class and doing Geometry with me.  We throw in a little P.E. and of course Piano lessons and her schedule is rather busy. That American Lit class alone had some really intense reading. I thought I would try to keep up with her readings for that class but couldn't,  mainly because I have to try to keep up with the other three kids and their classes as well.

Ian made a cell model out of breakfast cereal and fruit.

The boys were assigned to make a Greek meal so they made Lemon Chicken Soup and some Spanakopita.

The soup was tasty but a little too Lemony. The spanakopia was very good!

Ian and Henry are doing Williamsburg Academy classes also. Ian is 7th grade and Henry is 6th. Lucky for me the 6th and 7th grades are combined so essentially they are taking the same class. This is good since that is one less schedule I have to keep track of.  They are doing Humanities, STEM and Writing through Williamsburg.  I still do math with each of them.

Molly is where most of my focus is spent each day (other than just keeping the others on task and helping where there is questions).  Molly is now a 2nd grader and getting pretty good at reading. She still prefers me to read most of the books we use but she is getting quite proficient.  She is doing Singapore Math 2A at the moment.  Working through Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease and for fun doing a page or two of a Marvelous Me Journal.

We are taking a break from Story of the World this year and just doing World Cultures.  We are currently studying Africa. I have checked out just about every picture book, fiction and non fiction that our library has about Africa and we are just reading through them. We have a map of Africa that we color in as we come across a new country in Africa.  We have done a few Notebook pages about something we read that day and that is about it. We also watched "The Gods Must be Crazy" and "African Cats" as well as a bunch of youtube videos about Africa. So far this has been fun. We will pick a new continent in October and work our way through the world this year. I haven't done anything official for Science but with all the animals and biomes we have studied while learning about Africa I figure we have done a bit of science as well.

All four kids are still doing piano lessons.  I challenged the older three to learn a Hymn this summer and they were proud to play them for their piano teacher when we started lessons again this past week.

Some Artwork

My kids love art. They all enjoy getting messy with paints so I have tried to make sure we have a few more fun biggish art projects for them to try. 

 I happened to have some canvases in the garage and I figured it was time to use them.

 So the kids drew their hands on the canvas and painted them brown. Then went to work making those brown hands into trees by adding in leaves.

Each gave the project their own little flavor.

 Here is Ian's. He tried to show all four seasons in the leaves on the trees.

 Henry made his a Halloween night complete with jack-o-lanterns.

Sophia also went with a Fall theme.

Molly's looks more like a Summer day. 

All the canvases are sitting in my hall still. I haven't figured out where to hang this series of pictures as of yet. 

The boys are taking a Humanities class that is going through different civilizations and the class gave us our next art project. The boys were supposed to paint a Greek Vase. They said they could just paint a clay flower pot but I happened upon a blogpost that showed how to make a paper mache Greek Vase so I knew that would be way more fun than just painting a clay pot.

Balloons helped give the shape and then some Oatmeal canisters were trimmed to make the base and top for each vase. Add a handle and then cover the whole thing in paper mache.

 Messy but fun!

Didn't snap any photos of the painting process but here are their finished vases.

 Not very authentic designs. I don't think they had creapers or Kerbals in ancient Greece.

 Sophia went for a more typical theme. She drew Hercules throwing a wild dog over his back.

 Here is the other side. She went simple and just added a few dolphins.

So two big art projects already this month. I don't know if I can keep this trend going. I know they love to do the projects but they also don't like to get rid of them when they are done. I am running out of space to keep these big projects.   But they certainly do turn out nicely. I have some talented kids! and I am good at following directions. What would be do without the internet. Blogs and Pinterest are where I find all the best ideas.

September Birthdays

 September is both Henry and Sophia's Birthdays. They are a week apart so we get lots of treats and excitement right at the beginning of the month.

 Henry's morning gift was this cool  Perplexis game. It is a marble maze ball that kept us all busy most of the day trying to get the ball through all the paths.

 Henry requested Froot Loops. He never gets cereal like this and asks for it all the time when we go shopping. I always put him off since we don't usually buy cereals with food coloring and such. I relented for the birthday breakfast.

 Our dapper boy didn't just dress up  for his birthday. His birthday was a Sunday so this is him so excited to open the rest of his gifts that he didn't even wait to change his clothes first.

He requested Pumpkin Pie again this year!

Sophia's birthday started with some Fantasia books as her morning gift. She LOVES this movie, especially Fantasia 2000. So the big book is a book with all sorts of artwork and behind the scenes stories. The piano book is rather difficult but she is attempting some of them with her piano teacher.

To continue the Fantasia Theme to this birthday. She got a poster that needs to be framed but will look great on her wall. All her favorite characters from both movies are included together in this poster.

She also got a box of Disney puzzles. There is a Fantasia on in the mix that has all sorts of hidden Fantasia characters mixed together in the scene.

 She also received a new dress up dress (since she outgrew her Merida dress) and an itunes gift card which she is excited to use.

Sophia too requested pie rather than cake. She picked a very rich Peanut Butter cup pie.  Oreo cookie crust and peanut butter cream cheese filling with peanut butter cups mixed throughout.  It was very yummy but very rich. A little goes a long way!

We love celebrating birthdays and were happy to have Grandma and Grandpa here for Henry's and our Friends who were neighbors back when Sophia was born came to celebrate Sophia's with us.  Somehow our guest only made it into movies that we took and we didn't end up with any stills of them.