Trojans Horses and Trampolines- wk 20

 And we are back at it after about a week off for Christmas picking up with the Trojan war and trying out some of the blessing we received this Christmas. On our last day of break we took the kids to Top Golf here in Atlanta. Its an interactive driving range. The only person in our family with any golf expirence in my husband so it made for a fun afternoon as Mommy could be just as bad at something as the kids. Even Daddy was pretty rusty.

The girls spent part of break working on stop motion Minecraft movies from a kit Ying received as a gift. They loved taking stop animation Lego movies last year at coop and this allows them to continue the fun. The one down side is the app does not allow sharing of the movies they made. We hadn't realized this prior to purchasing it and were kinda of disappointed. We had thought they could make hisotry movies to share but oh well.

 Hulk got a Zoob Movers set. Its basically a robotic body that you can design legs, arms, and other features for. He loved controling it around that house..... Now on to school....

 Our Fava bean just keep growing. We transplanted it to a pot and staked it up. We are going to see how far we can go with it.It was so warm that we gave our bean plant some outdoor time also. It loved the unrestricted sunshine.

 As we read The Trojan War the girls decided to use the Nativity scene to reenact the scenes as we went...lol. It was quite hilarious and made the story stick for the kids. Forgive us Baby Jesus for your untimely demise as the hands of the Greeks.

We got some cool science lessons in this week. We discussed how sundials work based on the suns position in the sky. God also blessed us with a side lesson on cloud iridescence ( or cloud rainbows). It pretty rare here in the south to get the condition just right, especially on a 60 degree day. 

My Favorite Christmas gifts this Christmas were 2 rolling crates. One is storing our Spine books and workbooks down at Grandma and Grandpa's. Instead of having to chase books all over the house on different shelves we've sort of confiscated everything is in one concise place. It has shaved tons of time off our day and I am not harping on everyone constantly to clean up behind themselves. We roll it out to the table when we start and before everyone get to leave the table they put there stuff back in. We also got a smaller crate to function as our book basket/library transport. its fabulous when you taking out 50+ books a time now with 3 kids.

We continued on with writing strands this week and I was impressed by the stories I got. Its so funny how different the girls are when it comes to writing. They both finished the assignment meeting all qualifications but one had to get in a lot more details.

The weather finally cooperated for the kids to get their biggest Christmas present. Grandma and Grandpa got them a trampoline for their backyard. It lets them get some exercises on afternoons with Grandpa and during short breaks between subjects during school time. They were so excited to help put it together and finally get to jump.

We had to take a 30 min break during construction while Daddy was on the phone with his program director discussing his capstone project. Pretty sure she had no idea he wasn't "working"..lol

The Louisiana Purchase, Trotting Elves, and Christmas in Egypt....

This week has been slammed full!

Bible- The girls began by last Saturday visiting the Bethlehem Walk put on by a local church. Each year they build a mock city of Bethlehem marketplace and basically put on a walk through living history museum. Its really cool they have stalls "making" olive oil, jewelers, bakers, weavers, a "city hall" to sign the Roman census, and wandering Roman soldiers making sure you know Rome is in control and that Caesar should be "Hail"ed and Pharisees making sure as Jews we are keeping to the Law. It really helps put some context to the nativity story and why some many people just couldn't understand the miracle right in front of them. We continued on using some bits and bobs Christmas Bible lessons. We were also in high gear preparing for the Church musical.

History- We studied the Louisiana Purchase and briefly the War of 1812. The girls enjoyed making a skit of  the transaction between Jefferson, Livingston, and Napoleon. Book basket time focused on Lewis and Clark. Again the graphic novels were hits.

Math- We are up to lesson 61 on Teaching textbooks, and it seems to still be going well, though lately we have been doing more of the lessons in the workbooks (as opposed to the computer) and finding more errors related to sloppiness  and not lack of understanding the concepts.

Spelling- I am not sure this is doing much honestly. I can see some improvement over the year so far. Lesson 20 down. The best part is the using the words in a sentence, and the practice this is giving with proper sentence formation

Science- Focus on Plants- We did not do the seed experiment. The kids have done it 3-4 times before and honestly with everything going on the house was too much of a mess. Time 4 learning had a lot of good plant study stuff in their science section for 3rd grade so we used that in addition to the assignments.

LA & Phonics- Time 4 learning.

Now on to the fun stuff------

 Friday night, the kids and DH got to "snow" tube, bouncy house, and have fellowship at our home church's gigantic community Christmas festival. Glad they got out Friday night, because Saturday it poured.

Saturday morning, I got to leave work a little early in order to make it to the start of the kids big race. 36 degrees and pouring, but the Elves and Santa soldiered on. The girls ran the Elf Trot 5K in 48:34. Very proud of them. Hulk ran the Merry mile. His race was untimed but he definitely finished in the front of the pack for his age group (0-5). We dashed, soaking wet from the race to dress rehearsal. Then the Children's Choir preformed at the festival. Next, home and a 4 hour nap before I head back to work.

Sunday morning, the girls sang with the Choir in both morning services. Poor Ying forgot her solo in the 1st service out of nerves, but recovered for the 2nd service. Came home and got a 2 hour nap. Then got up, fed the crew and headed back to the church for the big performance! The girls rocked their solos, and Hulk was an awesome Toddler Jesus.

All of our B.I.G. Sounds kids did great. You can tell many of them are in multiple productions, because they have learned how to hide the flubs well. I am so very proud of them all!