Starting to settle in....

Well, we've probably had the most "routine" week we've had in a long time!  We are still not schooling on Mondays and won't for another couple weeks.  We had to take Wed. off this week as well because Rylan and I were at the Clinic all day doing the last day of his eye study.  He did really well (4 different visits through out the day with 2 hours in between) and it was nice to spend a day one on one with him.  He's such a different little guy one on one.  We were able to set his yearly eye appt. with the specialist, but not until Oct.  That's Mayo for you!  We also had another dr. visit (unplanned) when Kylie either contracted an eye infection OR she had a hyper-sensitive reaction to something.  She woke up Tuesday with her left eye swollen shut.  I ended up taking her in that afternoon and since the dr. couldn't tell for sure we ended up treating her for the infection just in case.  She's doing much better and her eye is almost back to normal.  I guess this was "eye week" at our house!

The rest of the week school-wise went well. Here's a run down of what we did:

Reading

Jayden: The Princess and Curdie
Kylie:  Heroines: Great Women through the Ages
             Saladin: Noble Prince of Islam
Rylan:  Bravo, Amelia Bedelia, Good Driving Amelia Bedelia, Amelia Bedelia's Masterpiece (sense a theme?)
Bryson: Bob books, Let's Go Dear Dragon, The Funny Baby, I Love You Dear Dragon, The Tale of Tricky Fox

Writing

Jayden: WWE3 Week 25
              cursive copywork
              an AWESOME history narration this week too!
Kylie:   WWE3 Week 2
              cursive copywork
              history narration
Rylan:   WWE1 Week 3
Bryson:  Bible verse copywork

Math

Jayden:   Started MM4th grade... I'm just going over topics that weren't included in MUS with him.
This week he worked on solving word problems with bar models, Pascal's triangle & bar graphs.
Kylie:     MM3rd grade.. addition review, clock work, addition terms and practice
Rylan:     MM1st grade... Refresh your memory addition and subtraction
Bryson:   MM1st grade... sums with 5

Grammar

Jayden:   R&S 4 Lesson 13, 15 and 16
Kylie:     R&S 3 Lesson 11, 12, 13
Rylan:     Nothing this week... will continue in FLL1 next week

Spelling

Jayden:  AAS 5  Step 5-6
Kylie:    AAS 3  Step 28 Yeah, she's done!!  AAS 4 Step 1
Rylan:   AAS 2  Step 7 and 8

History

SOTW2  Lesson 18  We learned about the crusades.  The kids were fascinated! 

Science

We studied 7 different constellations this week.  We read the stories pertaining to each (mostly review since we watched a video with most of the stories not too long ago) and created our own "shoebox planetarium" with cards for the constellations.  The kids LOVED this!  They especially liked it that I let them poke the holes through the cards with a large safety pin!  Oh the power!

Bible

We are all enjoying our new Grapevine curriculum.  We are still on the beginning timeline of the New Testament, just doing an overview right now.  The kids are having fun drawing the stick figures though... even Rylan (who HATES to draw) is having fun.

Our garden (plant project from the spring) got taken over by the biggest pumpkin plant I have ever seen.  Much to my distress the rest of the garden didn't fare quite as well.  Unfortunately, I didn't prune the stupid pumpkin plant and it put all it's energy into making tons of plant and only one lone small pumpkin (we'll see if it gets any bigger).  It was a year of learning for sure!  However we did get 4 large tomatoes and a cucumber this week!  Add this to the meager lettuce and few little carrots we got earlier in the summer and you could almost say we had a salad!

Oh, and just a little treat... here are some picts from Greg and my trip to Niagara Falls...

First our "Bobs" and our "Larry" from our garden.

This was our tour guide "Wally".  He did a great job!

We found out at the end, after talking to him that he's

a Christian too.

The best part for me... the Cave of the Winds... you hike

up the wooden stairs and can stand on the Hurricane Deck

getting doused by the edge of one of the Bridal Veil Falls.

Very cool... and I was drenched when we got done! 

I believe this was before the Hurricane deck and I'm

already soaked under my jacket!  (Note to self: next time

pull the hood strings to tighten it so water doesn't get in!)

This is the Maid of the Mist boat that goes right to the

base of Horseshoe Falls.  After Cave of the Winds this

was pretty mild, but still cool to be right at the base!

We're getting ready to board the boat here.  Not too bad for

taking the photo myself!  This time I cinched the hood!

 

Out on the observation deck looking at both the

American and Canadian Falls.

Ditto...

Our little rental car!  So fun to be able to be in a car

that really could have been a 2 seater pretty easily!

We spent an afternoon at Fort Niagara.  Very interesting!

This is the main building that was originally built by the French.

It was neat to go inside as it very much reminded me of a castle.

After studying so much about castles this past year with the kids

it was neat to relate to this building in a different way than I would have.

The whole grounds actually reminded me of what we've studied of castles.