WEIGHT TRAINING

Weight training has hit our home in a big way. It’s been fun to watch and listen to the boys training program. The older three alternate running and lifting.

Of course, Nolan and Zander are very interested in this. The weight set is in the garage. There is a window in our laundry room that looks into the garage. This is the spectator gallery.



The little boys are allowed to watch through the window but not to be out near the weights when they are in use. Here Zander watches and dreams.


Last night Zander and Nolan followed the boys out to the garage. I got a kick out of watching Zander lift the “big weight”.

The boys then conspired to make the little tiger feel totally macho….. and then he commented, “Mom! I lift the HUGE weights!” I think he’ll be perplexed the next time he tries this on his own.

School Highlights

We are back into the full swing of our school schedule. We continue to enjoy using Tapestry of Grace (see sidebar link). We have two weeks left of Unit 2. This week we delved into the Westward Expansion – specifically the OR Trail. This has led to quite some dreaming and discussion about us driving the OR Trail this summer. The younger two and I read “Little House in the Big Woods” and girrrrlllls….they ASKED me to read the NEXT BOOK! {Inside joke being that I LOVED the Little House book and could never get any of my older 5 children to listen to them!} I’m currently searching for journals of those who traveled the trails, the kids are pouring over atlases and we’re scheming. Living in the lower 48 it has occurred to us that we could drive this alone and Mike could meet us in WA….because he probably will never get the time away from the office for this project.

We began a new science book. I was a bit skeptical of this choice but we let Jared pick it. He chose the text on Zoology from Apologia’s elementary science course (see sidebar link). One of the first things we did was come up with a mnemonic phrase to help us remember the classification system. In keeping with our Narnia theme we came up with “King Peter Chases Over Fields, Grass and Streams” (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species). Unfortunately, I did NOT have all the items I needed for us to do our experiments on lift and drag – so we’ll try to get that done yet this weekend or early next week. I hate it when *I* slow down the kids’ study – but it’s a fact of life. I remind myself we aren’t sprinting here but in a marathon and in the long run….two days late for an experiment is not going to mess anyone up for life. Ah a funny during science. I promised not to name names. I had spent some time reading and discussing the material in this book. It’s a bit over a 1st and 2nd grader’s level so I don’t expect mastery - aiming for familiarity and we’ll cycle through them again before they hit Jr High. I asked what the word “instinct” means. They answered “instructions that God gives an animal for survival”…WooHoo – a very good answer. Then, pronouncing very carefully so they would hear the difference, I hopefully asked “What does EX…tinct mean? Someone answered “an animal with no stink”. :::snort::: As I thought of it later it does seem an o.k. definition.

The older boys finished “Les Miserables”. The famous three and I finished “On to OR” and the youngest two students and I are tearing through various OR trail books and the Little House series (Chris are you still my friend?). Jared finished”Moccasin Trail”.

RACEWAY CHAMP

Arielle has hit a milestone this week that 4 of her older brothers and sisters have hit before her. She completed her phonics program – signifying that she knows how to “read”. BreAnne learned to read with Abeka.

We use a program called Sing Spell Read and Write. It is laid out as a raceway track. The children go around the first time and learn the sounds of the alphabet. The second time through there is 36 steps to complete (learning short vowels, digraphs, long vowels etc). This took Arielle a bit more time than typical but hey….it proves once again my theory that when children are ready to learn – they learn quickly. She began to really catch on to the mechanics of reading at the end of the summer. In the past 16 weeks she has zipped through the steps. One of my children finished the program at 6, one at 9 ½ and Arielle at 8 ½….truthfully all the older ones read well and love to read regardless of the age that they learned the skill. {Grin}Yesterday I assigned a book titled “Wagon Wheels” for her to read on her own. I meant for it to take several days…it’s a short chapter book. She read it all in one day. She’s on her way!

We celebrated by having a Raceway Party last night. She doesn’t care for cake so we made from Scratch *Moosewood Brownies and frosted them. We also gave her a trophy that says “Phonics Champ – Arielle G... – 2006”. She chose dinner (Pizza) and after she blew out her candles was prodded to make a speech. She looked right at ME, blushed bright red and said, “Thank you for teaching me”! It was one of those homeschooling moments a mom lives for.

*The kids weren’t all that thrilled with the brownies…real butter, unsweetened chocolate, 5 eggs….he suspects that Duncan Hines has ruined them for life. I plan to make these again with Semi-Sweet chocolate and see if they’ll like them better….I LOVE these brownies, myself…bad combination they don’t – I do.