Kerr Christian Homeschool Academy

In my life this week... This week, we started off with a fun day by having some friends come over to play.  While the kids played, I worked on some much need but often neglegiated chores - cleaning the windows and doors.  We also had Craig's birthday this week - so we spent our holiday making a telescope cake and doing some extra cleaning - we've let the house get away from us a little bit.  Then, we took Craig out for dinner at the nicest restaurant in town.  We hoped to be done before worship time.  Unfortunately, it would have been faster to drive to his favorite restaurant in the nearest town, 30 miles away, and eat and then come back.  Crazy evening.  However, Craig enjoyed it and that's what counts!  We are also in the process of updating our garden with fresh flowers and mulch.  Lots of outdoor time, in between rain storms. In our homeschool this week... We have been studying plants.  The kids had fun being tree detectiv...

 Moon cake with an astronaunt and our very active solar flare sun cake.  Telescope Cake - we put a wax sheet over the upper ring for a "solar shield" and took it off for night time viewing!  We also had to have an astronomer.... The red, white, and black thing is a stuffed car that A made for Craig for his birthday.  She hand sewed most of it and I sewed on the windows with the machine when she ran out of time.  Very creative!!  What else was in those packages?  A book on astronomy web cams and the 2nd Narnia movie. The faithful cooking and creative idea helpers.  The littlest one is too small to look over the counter - she was the taste tester for any icing that fell.

In my life this week... It's been a crazy week.  It was warm - 70's - for the 1st time in a while and the kids enjoyed playing outside.  Also, we had several things on the schedule that were changed last minute and several things that came up last minute.  That always makes for a crazy week.  We also decided that warm weather is perfect for sprucing up the outside of the house.  We spent all afternoon planting new flowers. In our homeschool this week... School work this week has been fairly sporatic because of all the changes going on.  We did good on the morning work for the 1st part of the week and had several days of afternoon work, but no full days.  Places we're going and people we're seeing... We seemed to be every where this week.  Because of all the snow, we weren't able to make it to the grocery store, so we had a HUGE trip on Thursday.  It seems that everyone we know from worship was there.  We also were able ...

This is what our house looked like a week ago.  There was a good 6 inches on the newel posts of our back, upstairs deck.  This was our 2nd snow of the season.  Today, it snowed again, for the 3rd time.  This time, the temperatures aren't quite as cold - still below freezing just not in the single digits.  To help keep warm and (mostly) to burn off energy, the kids organized their own workout class while waiting on lunch. Now, they are on a quest to gather snow for snow cream.....

Today, we started the plant section of our science curriculum - "Considering God Creation".  We tried to get a celery to drink colored water and couldn't get that to work.  We even tried cutting off the ends - no go. We did create a terrarium with pepper plants which I took at cuttings from my Aerogarden.  I took the cuttings several weeks ago and discovered they finally have roots.  So, we planted them in 4 pots and covered with Kerr jars (what else would be use?)  In the next few weeks, we'll watch for water accumulation on the top/bottom of the jars.

A friend passed along "Managers of their Homes" by the Maxwell's.  It's an interesting read.  One thing I found in their book that I have picked up on and modified to meet our needs is scheduling the same lunches for every day of the week.  For example, Monday is Mac and Cheese day - every Monday.  Tuesday is Grilled Cheese and Quesadilla day.  etc.... We've taken it several steps further and added breakfast to the list and have assigned themes for dinner.  We still have some blanks and tweeking to do.  Here's what we have so far....... Monday: Breakfast - cereal Lunch - Mac and Cheese Dinner - Mexican Tuesday: Breakfast - Muffins Lunch - Mac and Cheese Dinner - Italian Wednesday: Breakfast - Coffee Bread/Sweet Bread Lunch - Chicken nuggest and French Fries Dinner - American Thursday: Breakfast - Waffles Lunch - Frozen Pizza Dinner - Chinese Friday: Breakfast - Lunch - Dinner - Seafood Saturday: Breakfast - Pa...

Last week, A ran out of writing prompts in her book.  Since the other books are in storage, I searched the Internet for ideas and found a good list here http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/1492.html .  I've told A that she can pick what she wants to write about and then cross it off so she's not doing the same thing over and over. Today, she selected Write a recipe for gooncake.  Basicly, she had to make up a recipe for cake.  So she did and then asked if we could have Home Ec so she would try it out.  The results - a beautiful cake which didn't rise, but edible.  We've already discussed ways to make it better.