back to school after 3 weeks

After 3 weeks off I am refreshed and have been much more relaxed with our schooling and you know what, my calmer mood seems to be helping all around because the kids seems more productive. We school year round 6 weeks on 1 week off so the 3 week break was so nice.

This week for 10 year old-

Math:We are done with a teaching textbooks 7th grade math and they are revising the pre algebra so I picked up some fun math books from the teacher supply store and Barnes n Nobles (they have a huge education section now) better than the teacher supply store. We will work on those to keeps skills fresh and refine them.
Writing: He wrote a letter to a solider in southern Afghanistan
Also worked on his other core studies: latin, spelling, vocab, history and reading, we just finished Bud Not Buddy(very good book 10 yr old really enjoyed it)

This week for the 5 year old-
We have been moving along with our phonics lessons using headsprout and hooked on phonics.Working on math skills by playing some new games.
We started reading our first American Girl book Meet Kaya

The 3 year old- we have been painting working, on letters, colors, numbers, and shape recognition. Thinking of starting letter of the week with him.



projects we did as a group

Salmon-

I love this site!
It was a great art project to do right after we read in our AG book about the Native Americans spear fishing for salmon. My 10 year old had fn doing this too! I also bought Salmon from the store that I am cooking for dinner tonight
Margarita Salmon :
6 (5 ounce) salmon fillets
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons orange blossom honey
1 pinch brown sugar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
lime slices for garnish
1.Place salmon fillets in a 9x13 inch baking dish. In a small bowl, stir together the lime juice, honey, brown sugar, and olive oil. Pour over the salmon. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to marinate.
2.Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (220 degrees C). Season the salmon with salt and pepper.
3.Bake for 15 minutes in the center of the preheated oven, or until fish flakes easily with a fork. Garnish with lime slices, and serve immediately.


Watercolor poetry-
each child needed to pick 1 color not using black or gray
then brainstorm their favorite things that the uses their senses on that are this color. Next create a simple poem. We then used watercolor paper and painted pictures on it using only the color we chose. I had to help the 5 year old with her rhyming couplets.She also had a full out crying breakdown because she couldn't paint and expert pink kitty. My kids get so frustrated when it comes to art they just expect that the first time they try something it will turn out like a masterpiece.

cooking- very important life to to have, plus kids LOVE doing it. my 2 older kids each week will be responsible to cook a meal. I bought a new cookbook at Disney, it has some yummy recipes in them. What I love most about this book is that it is all from scratch. I hate how so many kids cook books used premade processed food. It's very important for kids to know that biscuits don't come out of a can and that pie crust isn't just unrolled out of a box, bleh! So far we have made the Bayou Bread pudding, it was yummy. My son will be cooking something out of it later this week.


Our new cookbook, Princess Tiana doll and kissing frogs from Disney

Our new games we bought and played with this week are

We love this game very fun and educational!

4 kids 2 adults, 20+hours in the car = DISNEYLAND

I really though that the drive to Disney would be horrible, I really hate driving across town so I thought the trip would be miserable. I was wrong it was not bad at all. The kids did very well, of course they got to watch movies most of the time on the van DVD player. The worst part of the trip was when the gps re routed up through The Great Smokey Mountian national park on state route 411 to route 63. It was horrible, big hills, sharp turns, on a 2 lane road in the the middle of the night. All of us were motion sick it was worse than a roller coaster and I love roller coasters but not for and hour and a half.

We finally arrived on Sunday at 3pm we stayed at a disney resort the Port Orleans Riverside it was a very nice hotel. We booked our vacation as a pack that included our stay, park tickets, and the disney food plan for $3100, $900 of it was just the food plan but it includes 1 snack, 1 quick serve meal and 1 sit down restarnt each day per person. It was a lot of food, and it was very yummy as well. I was very worried about food choices since our family eats a very traditional food diet without processed foods. There were many healthier type foods than I expected so I was happy about that I know that the fruits and veggies were not organic and the meat I'm sure a not free range, grass fed, or hormone free but it was better than I expected. I did bring lots of healthy snacks, chedder bunnies, granola bars, organics raisins, nuts etc. That night I stayed at the hotel with the 3 younger ones while my husband took my oldest to the Magic Kingdom. I don't know who enjoyed it more my son or my husband.

Magic kingdom- most of our time was spent at this park (4 out of 8), The little kids loved the dumbo ride, the people mover and the talking garbage can in Tomarrowland. My oldest loved the jungle cruise. We got to see many princsess my favorite was prncess Tiana and Prince Navene they were so funny and very entertaining.

Epcot- We all enjoyed the livng with the land ride. Soaring was my favorite it really felt like you were hang gliding. My daughter got Princess Aurora picture and autograph (thats her favorire prinsess. The Nemo ride was a favorite of the little kids. We ate a late lunch at luch at The Coral Reef resaurant. We had to leave soon after that. The baby was having an allergic reaction we think it was from all the pollen, it was Epcots flower festival. There were flowers everywhere. I was really bummed because I wanted to soend at least 2 days in Epcot not 1/2 a day.

Hollywood Studies - was pretty much a bust for us it was 97 degrees and the little ones didn't have the patience to wait in line for any of the shows so we left early that day too. We had a good time just hanging out at the hotel pool.

Over all we had a lot of fun and have many pictures and memories to keep. I can't wait to go back it really was a magical place.