A Cowboy and The Silent Scream

This morning Ryan's bus didn't come so I took all four kids with me to MOPS.  For the mom's speaker, we had a financial planner.  It was very informative.  He told us that our goal should NOT be to pay off our homes.  He went into detail about why, but I was so elated with this new concept that I didn't hear or understand much else.  The kids had some Cowboy with his lasso come in and talk with them and do a few tricks. When we got home, my visiting teachers were there so we visited for a while while ALL of our kids played in the backyard (lot premium TOTALLY worth it) and afterward, my friend Krysti dropped off her daughter Kyleigh that is 6.  I took the five kids to McDonald's and me with "my" five kids attracted a lot of attention.  People were very friendly joking with me.  "ARE ALL THESE YOURS!?"  A friendly construction worker that we sat near taught all the kids the "Silent Scream."  Fists in the air, mouth open no sound.  The kids loved it.

Now, after playing outside for a while, they are watching Night at the Museum and eating popcorn.  Luke has piano at 4 and I may have them do either writing or math tonight, but not much else since Joey is going to take me out for sushi for my birthday that is tomorrow.  So I guess no real hard core school time, but it certainly has been a day full of fun experiences.

Can I buy a vowel?

On Saturday, I had another "phew, they ARE actually learning things!" moment.  Luke was drawing and writing Super Luke stories using the folded and stapled paper books I made for them.  I noticed that Isabel was writing in a book as well which was great because she usually isn't as excited to draw pictures and make up stories.  She showed me her book.  I was so excited because she had actually written a story with words (okay, more like "words") written in it!  She did a pretty good job on the spelling  although, Joey summed up her spelling style by saying, (not for her to hear of course) "Can I buy a vowel?"  Hahaha.  Her story was called, The Baby and the Princess.  It was SO cute. This morning they were busy again making up stories in their books.  I then read to them the two Shel Silverstein books, The Missing Piece and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O.  I had never read those before.  I am not sure what they were about.  I tried to relate the pieces to people and relationships, but then it got weird and so I ended up thinking that maybe I was taking it too deep.  Afterward I had them help me clean the schoolroom and gave them their spelling lists.  Some of the words I gave Isabel this week were words she used in her book she wrote.  I had them do their writing and journals, then Math.  Isabel then played a Math computer game.  Tonight Luke practiced piano and practiced riding his bike while I read to Isabel.  For family home evening we discussed the Word of Wisdom and health.  Afterward Joey made us a strawberry and banana smoothie and we watched an Animal Planet show together.

Egg Carton Game

Yesterday we created a game with an egg carton. here's what we did... -We had a huge egg carton that originally held 30 eggs. (you could do it with a regular egg carton as well.)

-Luke colored the inside of each compartment either orange, blue, or purple.

-Each child (Luke, Isabel, Ryan and Sylvia in this case) got three turns each to throw a bouncy ball into the egg carton.

-Point system was, blue = one point, purple = two points and orange = three points.

-Luke kept score with tally marks.

Last night Luke was writing his Super Luke 9 book, so today we got white paper, folded it over and stapled colored construction paper on the outside to make books. They wrote a lot of stories today. They also took their spelling tests, but that was pretty much it for school. It being Friday and having Ryan here, I was exhausted and our DVD player isn't working so I couldn't have them watch a Bill Nye AND our copy machine isn't working so I just said forget it to Math today as well.