Funny

First Grade Dolch

We use a combination of Harcourt High Frequency, Readers Are Leaders and Dolch for learning to read around here. Jackson started on the pre-primer list during Pre-K and took right off with reading. He started the First grade list this year and has mastered it as of today, so I am letting him move on the the 2nd grade list. He is happy to be moving on. We are doing consonant blends in Language Arts and he can name the sound of them all, but struggles when they are not at the beginning of a word. Lots of practice on that this week.

Ask Him Anything!

I made chili on Sunday and had left overs for chili dogs tonight. I love lots of beans in my chili and I was told that there was lots of.... well shall I say, flatulence! So tonight when we were getting ready to make dinner and I said it would be chili dogs it brought up lots of discussion about last night "musical" adventures. When Jordan said the dinner prayer, she asked God to "help us not have so much gas!" which caused erupted laughter. I guess they know that they can ask Him anything.

Busy Bulletin Board

At one point I was trying to post our monthly bulletin board, but just got away from it. I usually do them in the evenings after the kids go to bed so that they wake up to a surprise. Jordan loved this month's board and took pictures immediately. It is a bit busy, but fun. The trim comes from ABCteach.com and the rest is just random clip art.

The Whole Chicken

I do not profess to be a great cook, but we certainly do okay. M*ijer had whole chickens for $4.99 and we bought a few to give away last Wednesday. It was such a fun thing to surprise people with the extra gift. Anyway, I had 1 for us too. Now... I have never prepared a whole chicken before, but thought it would be a nice experience for the kids to help with preparing it. Jordan helped with taking off the skin and I cut up onion, celery and an apple to sit in the bottom of the crock pot. When it came to opening the bag of innards I had expected the heart, liver and neck and told the children so. Imagine our surprise when we pulled the neck out and the head was still ATTACHED! The beak and hollow eye sockets were a shock. Jordan had named the chicken during cleaning and was saying how much she was ready to be a vegetarian so when she found the head, she started opening and closing the beak, used a chicken voice (and a strange voice it was, LOL!) and had the chicken plead with us all to become vegetarians and to not eat him. It was very funny.

They all examined the heart (which they have seen lots of times as I often fish with chicken hearts) and thought the liver was "nasty". I did not take pictures...the whole transferring of raw meat juices thing, but I plan to buy another whole chicken because it was delicious, tender and made a beautiful broth that I cannot wait to use.

A fun science class for all.

Starting Again

We are getting ready to start our first full week after a wonderful vacation. It was good to be back at church today, although I was uncomfortable with the comments made about going to Nassau.

1st grade opened his unit 4 Lifepacs today in order to get ready for tomorrow. He is always excited to get new booklets. I was using Spelling Connections for 1st grade, but switched to ABC Teach spelling units as I liked the activities that could be done throughout the week for practice. He seems to like the sheets too.

Our home-school group is having the annual Spelling Bee in February.  I think I am putting a hold on everyone's spelling program to focus on Spelling Bee words.

4th and 8th grade have several essay projects coming up in the next few weeks so I think I will make Fridays a project day for them. We have a very old set of encyclopedia's that I would love to replace. I still like them to use reference books for research instead of the internet. We have not had our consistent weekly library trips yet because we have been so busy. I need to get back on track with those as they have yet to fulfill any of their required reading list. So much to do...so little time. LOL!

We were surprised today with a very generouse donation today for our Personal Needs Closet. We are so excited for the opportunity.

Happy Thanksgiving!!