Along The Road

And now for a moment of honesty. It was about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving when the honeymoon period officially ended. It wasn't anything in particular, no straw that broke the camel's back, no tipping over the edge, just a sudden realization that all of our frustration levels were rising. For L it was the effort and motivation needed to practice reading, for the little one it was figuring out how to entertain herself, and for me it was trying to keep them both focused or occupied while my attention bounced back and forth between them. I just felt super on edge, which is apparently contagious, and the patience I had worked so hard to hone was out the window. Our Thanksgiving break came just in time! Unfortunately, it wasn't just a break we needed; I realized that when we picked right back up where we left off post-vacation. We needed an adjustment to our approach.  Confession: I'm a type-A kind of person. Systems, details, routines, schedules, calendars, organiza...

This month we completed level 1 of our reading curriculum, worked on money, time, tens & ones, addition and graphing in math, learned about European exploration, monarchs, and the history of Russia in social studies, and had lots more fun with astronomy in science. I'm still trying to get better at the whole taking pictures thing, so not much to share visually for November, but I did get some pics of our moon-related activities... This was a quick and easy experiment we did to illustrate why the moon goes through different phases. I taped a white circle onto the wall, pointed a flashlight (the sun) at it from across the room, and had L hold a ball (the Earth) in between the "sun" and the "moon" to cast a shadow.  We also practiced drawing the various phases of the moon with chalk on black construction paper... ...and strategically munched on oreos... This was a crowd-pleaser!  :) We also love all things Fall! We took a walk outside ...

October was arguably our busiest month of 2016. It was filled with library storytimes, a field trip to the farm, fun at CC (our co-op), Halloween & Fall festivities, and a Hurricane Matthew evacuation! Somehow I managed to not take any pictures trick or treating in our neighborhood, going to our church's Country Carnival, or trick or treating at the local nursing home. #badmom! But here are some of the pics I did manage to get! HANDS ON HISTORY This month we learned about the Renaissance Period and the Protestant Reformation... We "sculpted" a bar of soap, like all the great artists of the Renaissance, and gave it to Nana as a gift. Super simple activity - all that is needed is soap, plastic knife, and water. We also painted like Michelangelo. I got to bust out my Europe pictures to show them the Sistine Chapel.  After talking about Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation, and the printing press that followed, we took a stab at making our own pap...