Week in Review: September 26-October 7, Weeks 3 & 4

Two more weeks have passed by and we have been trying to get projects done around the house. Soon, I'll be posting photos of the house of all the updates we have done with it.  It has been a ton of work, but I am happy with how it is all falling into place.  Here are a few things we have done around the house.   I put up a friend wall for the boys going upstairs to their rooms.  It's so nice seeing all these smiling faces.  We miss them all so much! 

 Ben built two benches for our kitchen table and the tv stand, so I started painting them this week.

 I finally figured out how to order my groceries online. It took forever because I had to translate every.single.word!  But, it was so nice to not have to go to the grocery store.  And we received this huge box of free goodies.

We also decorated for Halloween.  

Cooking Club

I started going to a cooking club and this week we made Thai food.  It was so comforting to have cashew chicken, fried rice, pad Thai, and curry.  It felt like "home".

 I wasn't able to go to cooking club this past week and the other women were so sweet and dropped me off the delicious Indian food they made.  It came just at the right time.  I didn't even have a clean dish, so it was a wonderful surprise and it was so appreciated.

School Time

Five in a Row

I was so disappointed last week because I took all of these great photos of Britton during his Five in a Row story and then my camera disc somehow deleted all of them.  I was so upset, but two weeks ago Britton started A Giraffe Goes to Paris.   It is such a wonderful story about the first giraffe to live in Paris, France.  Britton could not believe that this was a true story.  We studied giraffe and looked at all of our gifts from Egypt.

Britton had to draw a made up animal.  We talked about what it would be like to draw an animal you have never seen before.  He drew a bearaffe.

We talked about the four seasons and Britton painted a fall tree.

 This week, we started When I was Young in the Mountains.  I love this story.  And now we live in the mountains and we talked about what Britton's life will be like in the mountains.  We only made it through a couple days of this story and we will finish it next week.

Beyond Five in a Row

Greyson and Lincoln started Beyond Five in the Row this year and we are reading Sarah Plain and Tall. This is the first year we have worked through a chapter book, so this is a different set up for us. We have been working on a chapter every couple days and going in depth on each chapter.   We have talked about prairies and oceans.  We worked on setting up notebook to use during our book.  We will be working through this book for the next couple of months.

Story for the World

Britton has just started Story of the World Vol. 1 this year.  We have been talking about nomads and and how nomads moved to setting up villages.  Britton did a cave painting like the first nomads did.  

 Vol. 2

Greyson and Lincoln are learning about English Knights and the feudal system.  The boys worked on a knight lapbook and created their own coat of arms.

We also had a medieval meal.   We did this a few years ago and the boys still bring it up.  Our plates were thick pieces of bread, just like during medieval times.  We had chicken legs, bacon, cheese, asparagus, baked pears, and loaves of bread.  The boys also had coke only because last time I gave them root beer to represent ale. I couldn't find root beer her, so coke it was.  They loved this meal.

50 States

We learned about Texas and California this week.  So, we had a Texas and Californian meal.  For California we had California Club sandwiches and Cobb salads.  For Texas, we had Texas ranch Chicken casserole and a Texas sheet cake.  So good!

Tea on Tuesday

We had our first Tea on Tuesday this week and we made scones and enjoyed tea out of our new tea cups from Thailand.  We even had our first piece of mail for our teatime this week from a friend from Thailand.  It was so fun to do this again.  

Other Fun: 

Lots of silent reading this week.  We started IEW writing program this year and the boys wrote their first paragraph from this program.  I hear angels singing!!  This has always been a struggle for us and I am so happy to be using a program that is working.  We also did a couple art projects this week.  

These past few weeks have been tough.  I expected this, but it still doesn't make it any easier.  We are still trying to find a group that the boys fit in.  It always takes time.  We are working to make some homeschool connections.  We did meet a homeschooling family this week that will be moving from Santiago soon.  I am so sad because I think it would have been so fun to get to know them.  We did buy a great load of books that I am so excited about.  We are trying to take it day by day and trying to see that this was a good move for us.  Hoping that this coming week will be better for all of us and we will start to find our groove.  Thank you for all of the encouraging words over the past few weeks. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it.