More Pumpkin and tornadoes

We had a great week this week!  Rylan started it out sick (much like Bryson last week, except with actual vomiting :()  By Tuesday he was ready to join us again though.  The week was a rough one for Rylan.  Mom decided some things need to be dealt with and, well.... that's not always fun.  But, over all this was a great week with lots of learning taking place.  I can't believe we have one week left and then our first one week break.  Yeah!

Everyone is truckin' along in their basic skills.  I've noticed a huge improvement in Rylan's writing lately.  So nice to see!  Everyone did their normal lessons in the basics with no real unusual news. 

The kids are really enjoying the Hooda Math site.  I let them play the games a little each day, then Friday while I did geography with each child individually (corporate geography was a disaster last week!) they got to play a bit longer.

History found us in Europe this week.  England and Spain to be specific.  We read about the War of the Roses....

Are you as confused as we were?  What a crazy time in

England!  I'm surprised anyone knew who was king at all!

 We also read about Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, uniting the country.  Which, was a good story all in all until the end... they evicted the Jews from Spain.  Not nice.  Kylie found a video on Marco Polo by Schlessinger Media.  I'm really liking this company.  They have some good videos.  We watched this even though Marco Polo was a few weeks ago... good review. 

In geography the kids continued mapping the world.  Everybody is still on the 5 great circles and the Prime Meridian, except for Jayden.  He is ready to move onto continents so today we mapped Africa.  We are starting with blobs, just to get the continents in the correct place.  Sad thing is, even if my kids can do this simple act (putting continent blobs in the correct place on a map) it will be more than most adults can do!

In science this week we covered Jupiter and Saturn.  The kids are just enjoying this planet study so much!  As am I.  Their narrations are full of fun facts.

This experiment showed us why Saturn's rings

look solid and why we can see Saturn through the rings. 

The camera can't see as fast as our

eyes so it's not quite the same on film!

Using tea leaves and water we made the swirling

gas storms on Jupiter.  This showed us how the

red spot stays all clumped together in a giant

storm.  Three Earth's can fit inside that red spot!

Hard to see, but here's the "funnel" we created by

spinning the water.  The tea leaves didn't clump as much

as the picture in the book, but we were able to get the idea.

Here's our scale poster of the planets... it was so much fun

to see the kids' faces when they saw how big Jupiter is!

Here are some other highlights of the week...

We finally got around to cutting open the giant pumpkin. 

As I had suspected it was rotting inside.  (No one wanted

to believe me... why do moms have to always be the

"wet blanket?" :-)  Greg was very sad... he was looking

forward to some pumpkin seeds!  (By the way, he doesn't

normally dress in overalls... he was a farmer sowing seeds at

church on this morning!)

After the large pumpkin fiasco I decided to buy a "pie pumpkin"

and make pumpkin custard from scratch.  We are gluten free

here and I didn't want to bother with a crust, so seeing as the

best part is the filling anyway, we just made custard.

Much better inside!  Kylie cleaned out the inside of this

pumpkin and the one we grew in our garden.  She harvested

all the seeds and we roasted them... they didn't last long!

Steaming the pumpkin...

Mixing the custard

Ready to go in the oven

Have you gathered we are a huge pumpkin loving

family?  Greg was trying to keep the kids away from

the custard claiming it was his!  Dessert was a huge hit and

I think I'll be out buying more pumpkins this weekend!

The boys (Jayden and Rylan) have been really enjoying

flag football.  Rylan was sick this week, so he missed.

It let me concentrate on Jayden.  Next week will be

Rylan's turn for picts!

  Jayden's team is the Bears.  The Vikings beat them

this week... too bad this is not indicitive of real life! ;-)

I'm really frustrated with Blogger's photo import process... grrrr... the only way to get

these is the right order is to staggar them like this....

Anyway, we had some interesting things this week with food... our pumpkin was rotten and I had a worm in my apple!  Luckily, I cut it open first!  The kids were pretty grossed out and are a little leary to eat apples now!  My celery had a few ants today, but that was on purpose! :-)

I've been going a different direction with art.  I found a great art blog while perusing some threads at WTM.

She has some great ideas on there so I thought I'd just try some of them for awhile.  One idea was to read the book Ish by Peter A. Reynolds

In the story a young boy gives up drawing when his brother

laughs at his art work.  His sister tells him his picture is

"vase-ish" and he ends up regaining his confidence.  He makes

"ish" pictures and is once again happy drawing.

Since my kids very much like to do things the "right" way I thought

this would be a fabulous story to read.  Then each child did their

own "ish" drawing. 

Blogger is making my life difficult so these aren't in order...

Kylie's "Bible-ish"

Rylan's "Castle-ish"

Jayden's "Porcupine-ish"

Bryson's "ish" drawings

"Flag-ish", "House-ish", "Flashlight-ish"

and "Good Smell-ish"  (He was using his

scented markers!)

And finally... we got to "game day" this week!  The two older boys headed upstairs for a Pokemon duel and maybe??  Heroscape which Jayden just bought this week.  I taught Kylie and Bryson a new game (for them) called Forbidden Island.

Grrrr... layout again....

They loved the game and we had a lot of fun playing it.  I had to help them a lot with the strategy, but over time I think they'll catch on.

Is anybody else having as much trouble putting photos in as I am?  This is crazy!  Hope you all have a good weekend!